Kaleidoscope
by Galloway
Summary: AU BuffyGiles, XanderWillow, AngelCordelia, FaithOz, WesleyAnya, and SpikeVeruca , with a mention of GilesJenny and OzVeruca, plus implied AngelDrusilla, and semiexplicit BuffyFaith. Unfinished. Amazingly, Chapter 13 is up!
1. Perchance to Dream

At length Giles abandoned the plastic chair for the floor, leaning back against the beanbag instead. At least the reflections from the mirrorball didn't hit him square in the eyes that way, if the concrete was less than comfortable. And he could no longer put up with the incessant squeaking.

Still, he'd had little hope of sleeping since Spike had arrived at the basement door and proclaimed himself bored… not enough demons out to kill, apparently. Now the vampire had somehow managed to chat Anya up about her life as a demon for the vicarious thrill, leaving Buffy, Willow, and Xander to taking up a wholly inadequate three hand poker game two feet away on Xander's sleeping bag. Somehow he doubted things could be much worse.

"You mean his head just went pop, right in front of you?" Spike laughed.

"That was the wish."

Giles tried covering his eyes with a hand, but that just left the image on the back of his eyelids. Sleep – and possible dreaming – seemed less likely than it had five minutes ago. "Does she have to recount _every_ one of her tales with such glee?" he moaned.

Xander turned his head. "It's got a certain bizarre charm to it, I think."

Giles sighed deeply.

Willow turned a sympathetic eye on him. "Sorry, Giles, we're keeping you up, aren't we?"

"Whatever gave you that idea?" his voice dripped only a little sarcasm.

Buffy set down her cards. "That's it, my Watcher needs his rest. No more poker."

"You just say that because you're losing your shirt," Xander complained. "Or your yummy sushi pajamas. Or at least a whole bunch of chips," he tried to rescue himself from her look.

"Oh! If you want, I can try a sleeping spell for you, Giles," the young witch offered.

"I think a pair of earplugs would be quite sufficient," he said somewhat nervously. "No need to resort to the black arts."

Willow looked almost crestfallen. "Well, I don't have any lavender anyway."

"I have some mugwort in my purse. That might work," Anya offered from the sofa bed. She received a set of curious stares. "What?" she asked defensively. "I like the smell. Call me nostalgic."

Willow crawled over past the hanging sheet as Buffy collected the cards and Xander began to put away the chips. After some brief rummaging, Anya handed Willow a small bag, then turned back to her attentive audience of one.

"Tell me about the guy who ate himself again," Spike asked excitedly.

Buffy smoothed out a patch of sleeping bag beside her Watcher and sat cross-legged on it. She listened for a moment to Anya, then turned to Giles. "That whole wishing thing bothers me."

"Maybe it's that birthday association," Xander offered.

Buffy ignored him. "Do you remember when we sent — Evil Willow —" she lowered her voice to an undertone momentarily for her friend's benefit, "—back to her own reality? That's been confusing me."

In an unconscious gesture Buffy associated with 'mentor mode' Giles reached for his glasses. "How so, Buffy?"

The Slayer cocked her head. "Does it mean that her reality exists too? On some other demon plane or something?"

Giles pondered. "Well, there is a theory…"

"Oh! Oh! From quantum mechanics!" Willow exclaimed brightly, looking up from the small pile of herbs she was sorting. She turned sheepish at their looks. "Nerd girl, shutting up now."

"How much does a quantum mechanic make per hour, do you think?" Xander bemused. "But you'd have trouble with all those really small tools."

Giles shot him a look. "Actually Willow's right, although it has metaphysical consequences as well. The theory is that every time a decision is made, the universe splits in two, one reality taking each path."

Buffy frowned. "Well that sucks. So when I buy the good shoes, some clueless me in another dimension buys the skank shoes?"

"I think the important thing would be that _you_…" and he caught her eye, then sighed. "…bought the good shoes," he finished lamely.

Buffy beamed at him.

He couldn't help but echo her smile. "Anyway, it's just a theory. It's probably not so complicated as that, although the evidence of Willow's vampiric twin would suggest that Anya's former wishing ability would perform the same function. Parallel realities at least were created whenever she cast a wish."

"Oh," Buffy said, depressed once more.

Xander brightened. "And think about this: in each other reality a demon-Anya was casting more wishes. Makes you think."

Giles rolled his eyes. "Thank you, Xander."

"Now I have a headache," Buffy groaned.

Giles smoothed her hair with a hand. "It's late. Perhaps you should get some rest."

She nodded, and in an impulse born of fatigue, slid around on the sleeping bag and stretched her legs out beside her Watcher, resting against him.

"Doesn't mugwort enhance dreams?" Willow asked from where she worked.

"'A dream is a wish your heart makes,'" Buffy quoted sleepily, leaning her head against Giles' shoulder.

"Cinderella," Willow explained at his questioning look. "The movie. From Disney."

"Of course, on the Hellmouth, a dream is a wish a demon makes," Xander chimed in.

Buffy grumbled a frown at him.

"…having, the ex-demon girlfriend…" he added blankly. Then he sat up straighter. "Hey, what about things that didn't happen?"

Giles looked up from Buffy's face. "I beg your pardon?"

"I mean, a wish makes something happen, right? But it also makes something _not_ happen. Is there one of these parallel realities for that?"

Eyes tightly closed, Buffy frowned again.

"Xander, do shut up," Giles chided.

"That's what parallel means, Xander," Willow said in a gentle voice. "_Two_ things side by side."

"Right… like the parallel bars in gymnastics. Oooh, there's a thought to dream about… lady gymnasts…"

"I heard that!" Anya called from beyond the curtain.

Willow scooted back over closer. "Hand me that little table, Xander."

"Isn't that a _lot_ of herbs there, Will?" he questioned.

"Well I'm not sure if the mugwort is the right substitute. And I didn't have a clay pot, so I used Giles' 'Kiss the Librarian' mug," she explained. "Plus, I'm not sure I remember all the words, so I thought, you know, maybe overkill would help."

"We are just going to sleep, right?" Xander asked. "Not, like, 'sleep with the fishes'?"

"Xander," she pouted.

Giles cleared his throat. "Perhaps Xander's caution is justified, Will—" he began, and then got a look at her most pleading puppy dog eyes. "Right, then. Just a, uhm, small spell." He slipped his blanket over Buffy and she snuggled closer. Against the backdrop of that comfortable feeling, Willow's voice began a soft chanting, while Anya's voice droned on.

"…it was for this crazy woman who liked to play with dolls. Her wish was that a man who'd hurt her would be sorry. Kind of vague for a wish, and I think I got the wrong person. Wasn't one of my more exciting vengeances. I wanted to try again but D'Hoffryn, my demon superior, quoted the old 'one person, one wish' policy. Then there was the time…"

There was the sharp smell of sulfur as the witch lit a match, its glow catching the mirrorball above in a hundred ways as Xander flicked off the lamp and got comfortable on his sleeping bag. Giles brow furrowed as he absently translated Willow's Latin invocation in his head and decided to chastise her mangled pronunciation in the morning.

Then Willow dropped the flame in the mug, there was a bright flash, and sleep hit the room like cold weather does a bear.

-----


	2. Arrivals

Faith read the fading letters on a rusting water tower through the box car's corrugated steel wall: Sunnydale, CA. For some reason, the name piqued her interest as a hundred other similarly displayed small towns had not. And as luck would have it, she could feel the train slowing. A definite sign, she felt.

She stood and stretched, cat-like, brushing dust and straw from the seat of her black leather pants. She threw a look over her shoulder. "What d'ya think, Annie… one more stop?"

In the dim depths of the car, the tip of her companion's cigarette glowed red. "L.A.'s only a couple hours away," the blonde, whittling a piece of wood with a very large knife, said through a cloud of smoke.

Faith lifted the latch and slid the heavy door easily with one arm. "Yeah, but I get a good vibe from this town. Plus I'm gettin' too cooped in here to last another couple of hours." Faith closed her eyes and let the warm sunshine wash over her face comfortingly.

Annie watched as the sun caught the highlights in Faith's dark locks. But her voice didn't reflect the surge of affection she felt. "Use your head, Faith. We're going to L.A. to get lost. You wanna stop in some dink town where their one cop knows everybody by face and name?"

The pretty brunette was feeling too good to be cowed. "Hey, one cop, two of us," she smiled. "He doesn't stand a chance."

Annie flicked the butt of her cigarette over Faith's head and out the door, tucked away the knife, then climbed to her feet. She wasn't as tall as Faith — and Faith wasn't particularly tall — but there was enough threat in every gesture and movement to make men twice her size nervous. But Faith stood her ground, hands on hips, and finally the blonde turned her look on the backside of Sunnydale's sprawling suburbia, sliding by beyond the chain link fence at the edge of the trainyard.

Faith turned to follow Annie's gaze. She ran her hands down the sides of her own white sleeveless T-shirt in a caress. "Don't tell me you don't feel it. This is something new."

Annie grabbed the reserve smoke from behind Faith's ear and held it in her lips, then felt the pockets of her red leathers for a lighter. Finally she returned to the rear of the car for her jacket. "Well if we're goin' in, let's do it before sundown," she said.

The train settled to a stop and hissed angrily. The brunette jumped from the car and planted both boots into the trackside gravel. She turned to her companion as the other followed her down, bags over one shoulder.

"It's a new town, B," Faith smiled.

Buffy Anne Summers at last cracked a smirk. "Want, take, have."

* * *

Wesley Wyndham-Pryce pushed open the door to the _Runes and Wicca_ to find Alexander Harris, as usual, heads together over the counter with its proprietor — and his blushing bride to be — Willow Rosenberg. The henna-haired witch popped a quick wave.

The young soldier zipped up a duffel bag on the counter, then turned a crooked smile over his shoulder at him as he approached. "Hey Wes."

"Hello, Xander, Willow."

"Where's the She-Devil?" Xander looked past him, curiously.

"The, ah—" Wesley looked confused. "Oh, she's parking the car." He placed his palms on the counter. "I need to see Mr. Giles right away."

Willow gestured at the clock. "It's a little early for Ripper to make an appearance."

"Ah, yes, well…" he flummoxed. "It's terribly important."

"It usually is," Willow shrugged.

"Not _everyone_ in this town needs to sleep until sunset, you know."

"If they did, I wouldn't be standing here talking to you."

Wesley looked chagrinned. "True enough."

"Is there something _we_ can help you with, Wes?" Xander asked, as the shop door opened a second time.

"There have been some foreboding portents."

"If I had a dime for every time there were portents," Anya said as she stepped up to the Watcher and slipped a hand in the crook of his elbow.

"…you could pay the parking meter in front of the store?" Xander asked.

Anya frowned. "But we're friends. It seems wrong to charge your friends for parking."

"Yes, _we're_ friends," he gestured between the two of them, then repeated it in the direction of the door. "Just like the _parking meter _and the _city_ are friends. If you get another ticket they may deport Wesley."

"What kind of portents, Wes?" Willow encouraged.

"The book kind, or the Willy the Snitch kind?" Xander added.

"Both, actually. There is some evidence that a portal may be on the verge of opening."

"A portal?"

"An entranceway to the demon dimension."

"Like a Hellmouth?" Willow asked.

Anya chimed in. "Smaller than a Hellmouth, bigger than a breadbox."

"Yes," Wesley agreed. "They're more common than a Hellmouth, and tend to cluster around Hellmouths, but because of their size only minor demons can come through."

"Well that's not too bad," Willow said hopefully.

"Aside from the Mayor, all you've ever seen are minor demons," Anya corrected.

"But still bad in it's own way," the witch sighed.

Wesley continued. "Typically they can only be opened from _this_ side, and are usually guarded with wards and seals, but when the general level of demon energy on this side of the portal becomes high enough, the barriers weaken."

"We haven't noticed any increase in demon activity, though," Xander frowned.

"Nothing particularly acute. But there has been a steady increase."

"He's been charting it," Anya whispered loudly.

"It's something the Slayer is supposed to counteract when she arrives—"

Xander snorted. "Not the Slayer again, Wesley."

"Xander, I've been reading the Pergamum Codex, and it says—"

"Read whatever book you want," Xander said angrily. "Kendra died two and a half years ago, and no one is coming to replace her." He grabbed his duffel. "Now if you'll excuse me, I have a duty shift in half an hour."

Willow jumped up on her elbows on the countertop, leaning forward. "Kisses."

Xander's angry look softened quickly, and he touched her face as he pressed his lips to his fiancée's. "Have them take you home if Rip's not up."

"Yes, dear," she smiled at him sweetly.

He gave Anya a nod, then his frown faded back in as he regarded the Watcher once more, and started toward the exit.

"Xander," Wesley offered, "Codex aside, the demons at Willy's are nervous… something is coming."

The dark-haired soldier paused for just a moment. "This is Sunnydale, Wesley." He met the Watcher's eyes. "Something's always coming." Then he pushed open the door and exited into the dusk.

* * *

Angel felt the sun slip below the horizon in his bones. He felt it like a great weight rising from his chest, right before he opened his eyes.

Or maybe that was just Cordelia rolling off of him.

He turned his head to look at her — the long dark hair spilling over the covers and around her head, her guileless sleeping face, half-buried in the pillow — and afforded himself a rare smile. Then she frowned in her sleep and shifted uncomfortably. The sheet slipped down her naked back, and his smile melted away again.

They stared him in the face, accusingly. Yet he couldn't look away. Angel reached out a hand, and traced a finger down one of the razor-thin white lines, not touching lest she wake. In a few more years they'd fade away completely. If she tanned less deeply they wouldn't stand out as much, but she refused to let them decide for her. Or maybe, some part of him said, she wanted to be sure he wouldn't forget how they got there, forget his part in it. But he would never forget, and that would be cruel, and though Cordy was always blunt, she was rarely cruel.

He moved his hand away, and instead drew the backs of his fingers down the back of her arm, a touch she loved and a gesture uniquely theirs. She smiled briefly through the frown, but then her brow furrowed again. He leaned down and kissed the back of her hand gently.

"That better not be an 'I'm in the mood' thing," she murmured, "because your Hellmouth is giving me a major migraine."

Angel pushed back against the headboard. "Did you have a vision?"

She turned over on her back, putting the pillow over her head. "No, just a general ick."

"Aspirin?"

"Please."

He slipped from the bed and padded towards the bathroom. "Are you working tonight?" he called back through the door.

Cordelia looked towards him, then shielded her eyes from the stark glare of the bathroom lights. "That's me, Bronze-O-Girl, nine 'til closing. And after my last session at Sunny-Tail Sun Tan, I almost match that description."

Angel sat on the edge of the bed, Tylenol and glass in hand. "I'm sorry about all that, Cordelia."

"What," she frowned, sitting up on her elbows, "_you_ didn't not pay Daddy's taxes. Besides, I'm over the whole, 'I'm embarrassed for my old vapid friends to see me working' thing." She washed the pills down. "Anyway, if I don't like their attitudes, I can throw them out," she smiled. "I still rule the only hangout in Sunnydale."

He looked down at his hands. "I meant… you should be going to college, having a normal life. One that involves actual sun, not a tanning booth."

Cordy reached up gently, taking his chin and turning his face to meet her eyes. "Hey, when my boyfriend becomes Mr. Nine to Five, I'll change my schedule." She drew him down into a soft kiss. "Now hand me my robe, boyfriend."

Retrieving the satin garment from the chair where she'd thrown it, he saw her wince as she began to swing her legs out of bed. She had to steady herself. "Are you all right?"

"What?" she asked distractedly. "I'm fine."

Holding out the robe, he touched her shoulder. "Are you sure? Maybe you should stay in bed."

Cordelia snatched it from his hand, frowning, her voice sharp. "No, I'm not staying in bed." She stomped towards the bathroom, then thought better of the stomping.

"It's strong, isn't it?" Angel said. "Whatever you're feeling."

"It's annoying, that's what it is." She squeezed toothpaste on her brush. "You want to give me a normal life? Take these psychic… things… out of my head."

"You should take Rupert up on his offer," he suggested gently. "Teach you the mental disciplines to control them."

Cordy looked at him askance. "Yes, because Ripper is the _model_ of self-control."

Angel leaned against the bathroom doorframe as she rinsed and spit, watching her, and couldn't help a small smile. He loved her fire. "He'll be there tonight. You should talk to him."

"I should get my shower. I don't wanna be late; I have one too many demon-fighting sick days as it is."

Angel glanced at the clock. "You have two and half hours."

"Please," she drew back. "I have primping to do!" She dismissed him with a wave. "Away, away."

She closed the door on him. He walked to the window, drawing back the heavy curtain and looking out on the shadowed houses of Crawford Street.

It _was_ strong, whatever she felt. He was sure. Because the demon in him felt it too.

* * *

Daniel Osbourne, better known to the world at large as Oz, was restless. A not- uncommon condition for him, just usually it came later in the month, around the time of the full moon.

He'd been trying all day to read, but the page in front of his eyes looked extraordinarily familiar. If he had to guess it would be that he'd read the page before. Say, an hour ago, just before he'd gotten himself a sandwich. He flipped ahead through the book. Sure enough, he'd picked the book back up and started on the same chapter he had this morning. True, with James Joyce it was sometimes hard to tell the difference, but this was ridiculous.

Setting the book aside on his bedside table, Oz stood and stepped over to pick up his guitar. He didn't bother with the amp; he wasn't much interested in the sound. He could think better with it in his hands, and closing his eyes, he picked at the strings, trying to get ahold of the _feel_.

Oz was a werewolf living on a Hellmouth. As his mentor was wont to tell him, that was a unique opportunity for _feel_.

The notes vibrated under his fingertips. He opened his heart to the sensation. Deeper and deeper he went, as the pitches flowed out almost randomly from the instrument. Somewhere in them was a resonance, a beat that pulsed in time with the energies of the Hellmouth. He listened for the forces, as Ethan had coached him, the mystical movements in the ether. He could see the moon in his mind's eye, currently shining rising almost one quarter full over Djakarta, Luzon, and the South Seas. Closer to home, he could see the ley lines, the bands of magical energy flowing through the Earth. In his mind he was seeing them from above, looking down on a landscape shading into dusk, with these great glowing streaks crisscrossing and riding along the land. As he approached Sunnydale in his vision, they bent into a pattern of spokes and rings, like a giant spiderweb lain across the terrain, its center the ruins of an old, crumbling school building.

His pulse quickened as he swooped down from the virtual sky in his head. His fingers plucked faster at the strings, and unconsciously the nails on his picking hand lengthened and hardened. The notes were more coherent, and with a part of his brain he knew he was playing a song now, though he couldn't recall the name.

In his vision he could see the bright glowing sparkles of life energy, shining through the windows of the suburban houses like the glow of a winter night's toasty hearth fire. And other, more unsettling sparkles as well, these wandering the streets and hiding in shadows, hoping to prey on the brighter lights. Before his attention was drawn away, he saw two brilliant beacons moving together through the streets, drawing the magic of the ley lines out into whorls and spirals in their wake.

But his hands had started to strum chords now, heavy, minor-key sounds. There were other vibrations thrumming through the ley lines, as if the spider itself was shifting and tensing, preparing to make its way outward in search of some trapped prey. He turned and turned, a great ominous sensation stealing through his bones.

And then he realized the song in his ears was one of hers, and he shook himself awake, barely catching the guitar before it fell from his lap.

Oz put the instrument back in its stand and stood. He looked at the clock, and then went to clean up and change. He needed to get out of here for awhile, and the Bronze was clearly the best choice, given that a band very different from his own "Dingoes Ate My Baby" was playing. He needed to get something else in his ears.

Because he could still hear Veruca's voice in his head.

* * *

In one of the twelve cemeteries that graced the City of Sunnydale, those self-same vibrations provided their own soundtrack for a flickering column of light some distance below ground. Atop one of a hundred elegant mausoleums rose a spire into the cool night. Centered within a multitude of open-air windows, a bronze framework held a patchwork of mirrors, positioned to catch any and all stray light from without, and reflect it down a vent to an awaiting chandelier. Six precisely aligned and variously tinted crystals bounced the illumination to a broad crescent of cheval glasses bound in the wall of a great underground chamber. From there the lights converged to the space above a heavy stone dais, inscribed with runes ancient and powerful, to twinkle and dance as the sky wheeled far above.

A visitor to this underground chamber would probably think many things about the playful column of flickers and shadows. They'd comment on the serene beauty, or maybe how their resemblance to fireflies invoked a childish thrill in them.

It's doubtful they'd realize these giddy sparkles were the lock on the door of Hell.

Well, then again, they might just. For if they approached the chamber's front wall more closely, spent time examining the hundreds of mirrors aligned about its graceful arc, they'd soon see more than themselves within. For the ley lines were muddled here, and creatures fearsome and dark played behind the glasses' flat gaze.

The mirrors were enchanted. Each pointed at the sealed gate, and each reflected those things that lurked just beyond that gate in a dimension full of demons, darkness, and despair. Standing before the half circle, one could watch deadly shadows run from one glass to another, if one knew how to look.

Yet on this particular night beneath Sunnydale, no special wisdom was necessary to see a ghostly pale face that began to peer out from behind the leaded glass. It was a pretty face. Or had been, a hundred and fifty years before. Before many things, but especially before the mind behind the face had been entered, first by madness, then by death, then by a cruel, evil un-life. A pretty face that belonged, once, to a young girl named Drusilla.

-


	3. Lust at First Sight

Rupert Giles scratched the stubble on his chin as he sat up in his bed, looking around the cluttered little room and trying to get his bearings. He heard movement in the kitchen just outside the door and, turning his head to the great glowing red numbers of his bedside alarm, he surmised that those noises would be Willow, brewing coffee and fixing him a small breakfast. As she always did, odd as the hour might seem.

He rolled, naked, from the bed, and pulled on a dark robe, wincing at an almost forgotten shoulder injury. Opening the bedroom door, he shuffled out into the kitchen like a zombie, arcing to the counter and the waiting cup, black, and toast, buttered, then back towards his room without stopping.

"Morning, Willow," he mumbled without looking up.

"Evening, Rip," she answered. "Hey, eggs before you shower, okay?"

"Sure thing," he answered, and closed the door behind him.

Rupert kicked out the chair at his desk and sat, shoving one corner of the toast into his mouth to free a hand, with which he clicked on a lamp, and then pulled out the last leather-bound volume from a shelf above his cluttered work surface. He opened it with the one hand, and for the tenth day in a row, reached for the pen instead of the pack of cigarettes that lay there. He felt proud of himself.

He wondered yet again why he kept up this thing. Maybe because someone on the front line needed to record the beginning of the Slayerless era. Someone who actually saw the reality of it, unlike Witless Wesley, "Rogue Demon Hunter". Besides, it was cathartic. Writing down all the horrors he and the others faced nightly allowed him to put them behind himself. Rupert glanced up at the shelf. All thirteen volumes. Behind himself.

"_February 11_," he inscribed in a handwriting considerably more shaky than what adorned volume one. _"Five and a half weeks until the full moon on the equinox. Still have to research what grave celebrations might be awaiting that momentous occasion._"

He swallowed a mouthful of coffee, then, brow furrowed, looked at the cup. Willow must be trying a new blend. Rupert smiled. He did adore his Willow. Selflessly working the counter of their store every day, never once mentioning that the shifts they were supposed to split had gradually become the shifts he never took. Well, come the wedding he'd make it up to her. He'd a very nice nest egg saved, and since he'd first seen the ring on her finger, Rupert had planned to use it as a down payment on a little house she and Xander had been admiring.

Setting the coffee back down, he noticed writing on the side, and turned the mug curiously to read it. "Kiss the Librarian," it said.

Numbly he reached for the cigarettes. But his hand froze as he saw where he'd placed them to discourage himself. They sat before a small, wooden picture frame, and the sparkling brown eyes of his Jenny. His hand started to shake, poised between here and there, between now and then.

He turned the picture face down on the desk, and left the cigarettes where they were. Willow had some eggs for him to eat. He could finish the journal entry later.

* * *

Faith was bouncing down the sidewalk alongside a park with energy to burn. She'd barely looked at the motel room, to Annie's irritation. As long they'd been on the road, Annie could only get her companion to make the requisite safety checks — clearing paths to the exits, setting out the holy water on the nightstand, plenty of _wooden _furniture — about half the time. Annie had given up yelling.

Now she was trying to rush their circuit. But Annie was stubborn.

"_C'mon_, Annie," the brunette pleaded, walking backward three paces ahead. "There's people waiting to dance with us."

"Watch where you're going," Annie growled, drawing on her smoke. "And slow up."

Faith exhaled, exasperated. But she waited.

Annie looked at the girl beside her as she fell into step. Her voice was cold. "You know the routine, Faith. First we sweep, _then_ we party."

Faith threw up her hands. "It's a hick town, B! What's there gonna be to sweep up?"

The blonde stopped in her tracks. Her eyes bored into her friend as she flicked away her cigarette. "Have you counted how many graveyards we've passed?"

Faith stood uncomfortably. She looked down at her shoes, shuffling her feet slightly. "Maybe it's just an old town," she said, her voice very small.

Annie couldn't stay angry when Faith was like this. She suspected the other girl was aware of it, but her heart wanted to believe her companion ingenuous. Annie lifted a hand to Faith's soft dark hair, smoothing it gently.

"It's easier to take care of things up front," she said softly. "You know that."

Faith turned her cheek into Annie's palm momentarily, enjoying the caress. "I know, Annie. I just wanted one last night off before we hit L.A." Her dark eyes were liquid. "Who knows what we're gonna find there, you know?"

Annie was very tempted by the sweet face. But looking over Faith's shoulder, she decided it would have to wait.

"Same thing that's right here. Behind you!"

Faith had seen Annie's expression and her hand had already produced a stake from the back of her belt. She thrust the weapon back shoulder high without looking, and felt it connect. She held her breath against the dust cloud and turned into the combat.

Three more had apparently decided two young girls were enough to go around. Two young Slayers, however, were not what they'd prepared for.

Faith bent low and felt Annie leapfrog her into one oncoming vamp. From her crouch, Faith turned back to her right and lifted off into a helicopter spin, planting one boot after the other into the chest of a second.

She reached out a hand, which Annie grabbed, and they pulled past one another, stakes out and soon buried in the chests of the vamps that were each struggling to their feet. Annie kept rolling, coming out into an air tackle of the last demon, who'd decided running was a good strategy. They rolled through the grass, each trying for the upper hand. The vampire ended on top, locking into a choke maneuver on the smaller Slayer. It lasted about a second and a half, when his head jerked up, and he realized, in his last crumbly moment, that the upper hand wasn't always a good thing.

Faith tucked away her stake, then reached down a hand. "_Now_ are we ready to party?" she asked.

* * *

He could feel the throb of the music from the parking lot. A pulsing cacophony, louder than the growl of the bike between his legs. After the silence of Sunnydale's streets and his half of the cemeteries, the noise was welcome.

He swung to a stop and kicked down the stand. Taking off the black helmet, he shook out his sandy hair and turned off the engine. Shoving his gloves in the pocket of his leather jacket, he flashed a toothy smile back at a pair of young lovelies, probably about Willow's age, that had chatted him up just a few nights ago inside the Bronze.

"Hiiii, Ripper," the taller one, a buxom blonde, called.

"Hallo, ladies," he answered, exaggerating his accent, and they giggled.

"Do I get a dance tonight?" from the petite, curly haired brunette. Adorable. Ripper thought she looked quite like that actress on TV… Felicity something. Or maybe that was the character's name; he didn't really care.

"I think you need to get a permission slip for that, sweetheart," he moved to the door, then looked back. "See you inside," he winked.

When he stepped inside the club, Ripper saw Oz was already holding court by the billiard tables. The DJ was spinning at a bracing clip, though they were obviously setting up for a band on stage. He worked his way over towards his young friend, plucking a beer from the tray of a passing waitress, who looked angry until she recognized him, then relented.

Rip dropped his helmet and then himself onto the couch, then went to plant his booted heels onto the table amidst a cluster of bottles and glasses. The respective owners all scrambled and retrieved before his feet touched down. Beer by his side, hHe laced his fingers behind his head, leaning back.

"Quiet night, huh?" Oz stated, rather than really asked.

Ripper looked about at the bustling crowd. "Actually seems rather hopping."

The younger man shook his head. "I meant…" and he gestured with a nod to outside.

The ex-Watcher agreed. "Yes, seemed so."

"More quiet than it should be," Oz said, and leaned back down to line up his shot.

Ripper cocked his head. "You know something?"

"Felt it." He stroked, then stood. "Shouldn't _be_ quiet."

"Have you heard anything?"

"Thought maybe _you'd_ know."

The older man took a long pull on his beer, then frowned. He should have lifted something imported. "Willow did say that Witless had been by. Portents of some kind."

Oz grinned. "Where's that respect for your superiors you're always telling me about?"

"Elders, I said. Gotta be clear on these things." He stretched out his arms on the back of the couch, then looked about. "Anything you might've heard here?"

The werewolf leaned over his table again. "Nothing new or unusual," he said. But then Ripper saw his head come back up, like he'd sensed something.

"What?"

Oz took his shot, then looked back over his shoulder. "Door," he said.

Ripper reflexively slipped a hand inside his jacket for the stake secured there. But what he saw made his heart pound for a different reason. The song had slowed, and they came in dancing to it. Nineteen, maybe twenty years old. Younger than he usually took seriously. Except when it had been his job to.

One was brunette, and taller. The other was blonde, and perfect. He grinned at that. Maybe not perfect, exactly, and the other was no slouch, but the shorter one captivated his gaze.

She'd be five foot three if she stretched. Her hair was full, and to the middle of her back. It was kinked, as if she'd had it in a braid until recently. She was fit, sleek of arm, and lithe. They were both fit, actually, with a light flush and sheen as if they'd been working out recently, because the night outside was cool. And she seemed, his little blonde one, to possess all the confidence in the world.

And then she looked right at him.

* * *

She looked right at him.

He was older than she usually took seriously. Late thirties, early forties. But though he was clearly above the average age for this club… he was also _clearly_ above average.

Sandy brown hair, trim, well-muscled chest beneath the open leather jacket. A little chest hair curling out from beneath the scoop-necked white tee. The almost-arrogant look of owning the place.

When she spotted him, he'd been checking her out. Not that that didn't happen a hundred times a day, but for some reason she felt the irrational need to measure up.

"Check out Mr. King of the Bar," Faith whispered in her ear.

"Way ahead of you," she answered.

She decided to play it cool. Then she shook her head… since when had she ever had to _decide_ to play it cool?

Annie and Faith made their way to the dance floor, beginning a slow grind that attracted willing partners immediately. Still, the blonde Slayer kept up an intermittent eye contact with the older man.

"I like his little friend," Faith said.

Annie took in the other one, playing pool with someone wholly uninteresting third party but chatting with the man. Smallish, but solid. Wild hair a wicked black that was obviously his shade of the month. Black fingernails for that goth look, which she usually didn't go for, but which somehow suited him well.

"Nice," she said.

"Maybe we need to shoot some pool later," Faith grinned.

Annie met her companion's eyes. "Ya think?" she smiled.

* * *

Ripper attempted not to be obvious with his hungry stare. "You scared me for a minute there," he said to Oz.

"Well the hair stood up on _my_ neck," the wolf gave a small smirk.

"Tell me you were looking at the brunette."

"Reserving the blonde for yourself?"

"That was the idea."

Oz leaned on his cue. "Feelin' the need to dance later."

"You think?" the ex-Watcher chuckled. He waved down a waitress for another beer, then caught a pair of friendly faces at the club door.

* * *

Angel spotted Ripper over by the pool tables, and offered a nod of greeting. His hand touched the small of Cordy's back, and she glanced at him then followed his gaze.

"All _right_," she said tersely, "I'll talk to him."

"No pressure," Angel grinned.

She glared at him. "Witness me, unpressured mental girl, scheduling an appointment with the doctor of weird." She slipped off her jacket. "_After _I clock in."

"I'm gonna say hi," the vampire told her. "I'll see you in a bit."

She let him kiss her, then headed towards the back room.

Angel slipped through the crowd easily, though his eyes kept scanning. He could feel something in the air, as he had at home.

"Rupert, Oz," he greeted the others.

Oz nodded. Ripper stuck out a hand, which the vampire clasped.

"Nice to see you, Angel."

"Likewise," he responded, eyes still nervous.

Ripper cocked his head. "Something amiss?"

"Just a feeling," he shook his head.

"You're not the first tonight," Oz said. "Plus… portents."

"An entirely unique night in the City of Sunnydale," Ripper commented wryly.

"Cordelia felt it too."

"Vision?" Oz asked.

"No, just a general—" he grinned at Cordy's color. "—sense," he finished.

Oz sat down on the arm of the couch. "So what's our plan?"

"Well I think we need something more substantial than a _feeling_ to go on," Ripper said. Then he caught their looks. "Which… means…" and finally he gave in, "…that I'll talk to Wesley." He took a swig of beer. "I don't have to start now, do I?"

* * *

"Who's the new hunk?" Faith asked, over the pulsing music.

"We don't even know who the old hunks are," Annie answered. Something about the new guy bothered her, but she couldn't place it. "You're not getting fickle already, are you?" she smiled.

"Nah," Faith wrinkled her nose as if she'd caught a foul odor. "I think I saw him come in with somebody anyway."

"Oh darn," Annie chuckled. "You getting thirsty?"

"Getting?" Faith wiped her brow.

Annie grabbed her hand and they headed for the bar. They perched on two swivel stools and Annie swung around with her back to the counter, while Faith tried to flag down the bartender. There were two, one male and one female, but the male, who was desperately trying to head their way at Faith's appraising smile, couldn't get the patron he was serving to shut up. Finally the other, a startlingly pretty brunette about their own age, came their way.

"What can I get you two?" she asked.

Faith played nonchalant. "Couple of beers."

The bartender looked them over. "…that I can _actually_ get you two?"

Annie smiled. "How 'bout his number?" she said without looking back.

The woman followed Annie's gaze. "Tall, dark, in the black duster? Not that either; that's _my_ boyfriend."

"There's a surprise," Faith laughed.

Annie shook her head. "Meant the one on the couch."

"Who, Ripper?"

Faith tilted her head. "As in 'Jack the'?"

The bartender smiled. "Never can tell. Actually he's a good friend of mine. Runs a magi— er, a New Age shop over on Main, near the Espresso Pump."

Annie's brow furrowed. "New Age shop? Doesn't seem likely."

Faith reached for the bowl of peanuts. "Where's the Espresso Pump?"

The woman raised her perfectly sculpted eyebrows. "You two are new here, aren't you?"

"Just got into town," the dark haireddark-haired Slayer said.

"Faith…" Annie warned, shutting her up.

"Oh, where are you staying?" the bartender asked.

"Why?" Annie half-turned, her voice sharp.

"God," the woman frowned, "just thought I'd give you directions. Or I could just call him over for you."

* * *

"I'm not sure if we're getting somewhere, or if we're in trouble," Oz said to Ripper from the arm of the couch.

The older man met his gaze. "What about?"

Oz nodded his head at the bar. "Cordelia is talking to our girls."

Ripper rubbed his eyes. "Fifty-fifty, I'd say."

Angel looked at the bar. His face was clouded. "Who are they?"

"They're new," Oz said.

"And they're magnificent, aren't they?" Ripper added with a grin.

"They're… trouble," Angel said quietly.

Ripper sat forward. "Meaning what, exactly?"

The vampire shook his head. "I've had an uneasy feeling since I walked in tonight. And they're the reason."

* * *

"No, that's all right," the blonde girl said. "No need to trouble yourself."

Cordelia shrugged. "It's no trouble, really." She lifted a hand to gesture to Rupert, and suddenly it felt like a Rottweiler had grabbed her. She looked down at the girl's hand around her wrist and a wave of nausea and weakness hit her, along with a blinding pain as the images crashed through her mind. She felt her knees start to buckle, but the girl held her upright.

* * *

Angel saw the girl grab Cordelia's arm, and then saw the expression on his lover's face. He started clawing through the crowd.

* * *

Faith saw the black-coated man, the one the bartender said was her boyfriend, start in their direction, his face a dark scowl. She started to turn towards her companion… they didn't want any trouble. Then her eye caught the mirror behind the bar, and the uneasy feeling the man had given her before suddenly made sense. "Annie, let's go."

Annie was trying to hold the bartender up. "You okay?" her voice was concerned.

The other bartender started their way.

Faith tugged on Annie's arm. "Annie… her boyfriend… has trouble shaving…" she gestured to the mirror, and the boyfriend. Or rather, _not_ the boyfriend.

Annie's eyes widened. She let the bartender go and turned to face the new threat, hand reaching into her jacket.

Faith grabbed her wrist. "Not in here," she whispered harshly.

The blonde shook herself. "Right… right." She took Faith's hand and they headed for the door.

* * *

Angel slid to a stop at the bar with Ripper and Oz a step behind. "Follow them," he ordered, and they headed for the door.

He hopped onto the bar and swung his legs over. Matt, the other bartender, was trying to hold Cordelia up. Angel slipped between them and lifted her into his arms. He carried her to the manager's office quickly, issuing a command of "Water!" over his shoulder.

He laid her down on the couch in the office, wiping her forehead with his hand. His voice was soothing. "It's okay, it's okay. Rupert and Oz went after them." He examined her wrist quickly, where the girl's fingers had left the beginnings of bruises. "You're okay now."

Cordelia swallowed, looking at him through haunted eyes. "It's not them," her voice quivered, close to breaking. "It's worse." Angel met her eyes. "Much, much worse."

* * *

Oz skidded from the alley into the parking lot to find nothing but two couples walking slowly towards their cars. He focused his wolf-enhanced vision into the dark beyond the lot's lampposts as Ripper slowed up beside him.

"Bloody hell," the older man panted. "Anything?" he asked.

Oz shook his head.

"They couldn't be gone," Ripper growled. "How fast could they run?"

Oz raised an eyebrow. "How long have you lived in Sunnydale?" Oz raised an eyebrow.

* * *

The monitors echoed loudly on the mostly empty hall of the mostly empty wing of Sunnydale Medical Center. It was a place for the hopeless and the abandoned, and few were more so than the girl in the bed. All that spoke for her was a piece of paper and a well-stocked bank account, both in the legacy of Richard Wilkins III, deceased Mayor of Sunnydale.

She'd served him well, but more, been like a daughter to him. In the end though she'd failed him, or at least those were her last conscious thoughts, before slipping off a building and into a coma. That she lived at all was a tribute to his work, his training. That he taught her how to tap into the energy of the Hellmouth that lay beneath his city.

But now she was helpless, as well as hopeless, and her very presence within the realm of the Hellmouth was, ironically, the cause. For while she lay sleeping, another force was searching for just a one as her. Indeed, the other creature thought, finding her — especially _her_ — was a true gift.

Inside the girl's mind was a fragmented wasteland, time passing in snatches of dreams and visions, and no way to tell the difference between. The flow of the ley lines and the energies of the Hellmouth collided in this tabula rasa, images prophetic and images profane equally abundant. Into this melange came a single voice, one soothing and powerful, more powerful than the girl herself. Unable to move, unable to fight, her mind and body too far from healed to resist, the voice, the spirit took control.

No one could hear the girl's scream, because her body couldn't produce one. Instead, anyone nearby, had there been such a one amidst the hopeless and abandoned, would have heard a soft chuckling, as the vampire Drusilla awoke in the body of the werewolf Veruca.

-


	4. Nightmare Coming

"Oh, God," Cordelia closed her eyes tightly. Tears squeezed from the corners and slipped down her cheeks. "When is this gonna end?"

Angel's hands gripped her shoulders lightly. "Cordelia? What is it? When is what going to end?"

He could hardly hear her voice. "When will she leave us alone?"

Matt arrived with a tall glass of water, which Angel took gratefully. "Cordy, just calm down and talk to me." He offered her the glass. "Drink this."

"Calm down?" she opened her eyes and looked at him blankly. "You want me to calm down?" She slapped the glass from his hand and it shattered on the floor."_When do I get my life back!_"

Angel caught her arms as she railed at him. "Give us a minute," he told Matt, who eagerly complied, pulling the door shut behind him.

"Cordy…" he said, and still she fought. "Cordelia! I'm trying to help you!"

The brunette collapsed back on the couch, drawing her knees up, shrinking from him. "Help me?" she said weakly. "You brought her here. She came here for you."

And then he knew. Angel sat back on his heels. If he knew how to breathe, he'd have forgotten just then. "No…" he whispered.

She wiped at her eyes.

Angel shook himself. "What did you see?"

"You know what I saw. She's coming back." There were footsteps outside the office and Cordy glanced that way. "You want to tell them?"

* * *

"They're in the office," the bartender told Ripper and Oz as they came back inside. "Don't know if you want to go in there."

"We'll be okay," Ripper assured the man.

He heard Angel saying, "…until we know more," as the two entered the small room. Cordelia looked shaken; the vampire… well, that was usually hard to tell.

Oz shook his head at Angel's unspoken question.

"We're going to keep looking," Ripper told them, "but we wanted to let you know, and check on Cordelia."

The young woman gave him a weak smile, but her eyes were brimming. "I'll be alright."

The ex-Watcher nodded at her sympathetically. He looked to Angel. "Anything we need to know?"

The vampire's face was clouded. "Still trying to figure that out."

"Well," he said, deciding not to press, "we'll leave you to it." He put a hand on Oz's shoulder and they slipped back out.

The two didn't speak until they'd reached the parking lot once more. Oz looked out again. "What are our odds here?"

"Slim to none," Ripper mused.

"Usual odds, in other words."

"Quite," he smiled. "Well, we can check some of our… other clubs. But we haven't seen them before."

"New in town?" the wolf questioned.

"It's a possibility," Ripper shrugged. "I suppose the motel district could be a place to look."

"Unless they're demons. Which means sewers and cemeteries."

"Sunnydale is a magnet."

"Roswell of the demon set," Oz said flatly. "So we split up?"

The Brit nodded.

"I call sewers," the young man smiled.

"Bless you," Ripper said, then grinned. "I call the blonde."

* * *

"I'll take the little guy," Faith said as they looked down on the two heading out on foot, from flat atop the roof of the Bronze.

"You sure we want to do this?" Annie asked.

"Hey," the brunette said. "Their buddy's a vampire. Salty goodness or not, I'm thinking they're trouble."

Annie shifted uncomfortably. "Yeah. Guess so."

"Plus, they're down there looking for _us._ And we didn't do anything." Faith caught Annie's eye. "Right?"

She shrugged. "Yeah, wasn't me. She just started falling."

"So, we track the friends, we might get the boyfriend in the open."

"And what if we just shouldn't get involved?" Annie's voice was brittle.

"How about, maybe they need us? C'mon, B, five vampires, plus friends, first night?" The thrill in the brunette's voice was obvious. "Something whacked about this town." Faith cocked her head, looking at her companion closely. "You taught me this stuff." She smiled. "Not losing your nerve, are you?"

The blonde Slayer was reluctant to take the bait, but couldn't help herself. "Me? _You're_ taking the little guy."

"Yeah, but I might actually _catch_ my guy," Faith rolled and started towards the fire escape. "Meet at the hotel by dawn?"

Annie nodded, then moved to catch Faith's arm. "Recon only, okay? Unless you get in trouble."

The brunette rolled her eyes. "Wussy."

She gripped the arm tighter. "I mean it. Be careful."

"I'm always careful," Faith pulled away and started off. She paused at the ladder long enough to blow a kiss. "Love ya, B…" she smiled, and disappeared over the edge and into the darkness.

* * *

Oz opened his senses to the night as he walked through the suburbs of Sunnydale. He was saving the sewers — and their lovely stench that would overwhelm his sense of smell — for later. For now he was going back over the graveyards he'd hit earlier on patrol, with the same result: nothing. It was as if someone had swept them before he'd come out for the evening.

It was after midnight and the moon was set, so he could give over to the wolf more without losing control. The air was an intoxicating blend of aromas: the dewy grass and the perfume of well-manicured flower beds, and with the wind coming from the west, the salty taste of the sea from across town. As he approached Restfield Cemetery there was added the slight smell of decay.

He walked along the tall iron fence separating the graveyard from the sidewalk, eyes scanning the space within. It was difficult with the streetlights at his back. With a glance around to be sure no one was watching, Oz gathered his strength and sprang atop one of the regular stone pillars along the fence, then back down into the grass on the other side.

As he touched down, his sensitive ears picked up a sound behind him and off to one side, rather like a startled gasp, quickly squelched. He waited, but heard nothing else.

Using one of Veruca's old tricks, Oz began to walk with the wind at his back. Stepping quietly through the grass, he felt the low, involuntary snarl in his throat as he caught the scent from behind him after a few moments.

He slowed. But then the scent was gone again, and he wondered if he'd imagined it. The light smell of sweat, and new leather. (Which could, he reasoned, be himself, looking down at his jacket.) But also apples, and the sweetish aroma of unburned tobacco. And now nothing.

Shaking his head, he continued on in his search, nerves on full alert.

* * *

Ripper spent an hour casing his favorite underground haunts, and questioning his usual sources. Though he got no leads, several brawny humans and a Kailiff demon had promised to contact him if two matching girls were to show up. If they were new in town, he doubted they'd find these private clubs, but he had the impression that the two knew how to uncover the action. And Sunnydale never lacked for action.

_Willy's_ was its usual subdued self, albeit somewhat crowded, and though his entrance caused a minor stir (particularly with a confused Fyarl), Ripper's focused attention on its proprietor allowed him uninterrupted passage to the bar.

"Ripper," Willy greeted him with an air of near relief. "Fancy seeing someone of your species here."

The ex-Watcher scanned the crowd. "I'm looking for two girls, human. Blonde and brunette."

"This isn't the best place to snag _that_ kind of threesome, Rip, but if you're not opposed to interspecies dating—" and then Ripper had him by the collar.

"Just tell me, Willy," he said, voice low but not yet threatening.

"Haven't seen 'em," the barkeep gasped. "No one like that, not tonight."

Ripper released him. "If you do, I'm looking for them. Alive."

"You know me, Rip, I have a strict 'no outside food' policy."

The ex-Watcher started for the door, but Willy's voice sounded unbearably servile and slowed him. "Hey, Rip, have you talked to Witless lately? I was telling him…" the voice faded with Ripper's glare.

"What now? More portents? Signs of doom? Uneasy feelings? This is Sunnydale; you hear those every day. Are you telling me there's something different?"

"Look, Rip, I know it's easy to get the guy going." He leaned over the bar, and the Englishman humored him with only a small roll of eyes. "Something's got the clientele real nervous," the barkeep whispered. "Sort of feeling there hasn't been since the Ascension. Something big and bad is coming, Ripper." He resumed a casual stance for the benefit of his other customers. "Bad for business, you know?"

"I'll keep it in mind," Ripper answered, and headed for the door again. Something coming. Not felt for years. That earned a modicum more attention coming from Willy's mouth than Wesley's, but on top of Angel and Oz….

He gathered himself outside the bar. No sign, not unexpectedly. With a fleeting hope that he'd fair better in the motel district, Ripper headed back for the Bronze and his bike, deep in thought. And once again missed his extra shadow, as he'd done since he left there earlier tonight.

* * *

When his destination was obvious, Annie paced herself to beat him there. If he was looking for her, he'd been doing it in strange places. His last, seedy-looking stop had given off such a supernatural vibe that her fillings hurt. She was starting to want to walk the other way. He was human and she could take him without much effort, but she didn't need the grief. _They _didn't need the grief, not when L.A. was a train hop away.

Annie noticed the bike as she entered the parking lot. It was a Vintage Classic, low profile and lots of chrome. She doubted there were many in this town. She didn't need to see the black helmet he'd had sitting beside him to know it was his.

Faith would go ahead anyway; Annie knew that look she'd had. And for that, she walked up to the bike and took a lean on it. Without information, Faith might be in danger. That was unacceptable.

He spotted her right away as he entered the lot. She had speculated that it was just the club atmosphere, or the high of the kill still in her blood, that drew her to him before. That away from there, at some other time, he'd just revert to an uninteresting, early-middle-aged creep who liked to hang out at clubs with people half his age. Now she realized that wasn't going to be happening, watching him walk toward her with no evidence of surprise to find her there. She took in the unconscious grace of his gait. The cycle leathers fit his form well; she doubted he worked out, but whatever he did — and New Age shop proprietor definitely seemed inaccurate — kept him fit and, from his cool, hyperaware posture, fighting trim. What had the bartender called him? Ripper? The name fit him.

Then his green eyes met hers, and she hoped whatever had just kicked her in the gut wasn't visible on her face.

"Guess you haven't left town," he said in a smooth British accent that made her toes curl.

She raised an eyebrow. "Does that mean you were looking for me?"

"Well, you did leave awfully fast."

"I like to avoid trouble," she said. The look on his face said he didn't believe that. "How's your friend?"

She looked away, but felt him looking at her, measuring her somehow. "She'll be fine."

"I didn't do… whatever happened to her, you know."

"No," he answered slowly, "you didn't. She has… spells, occasionally."

Annie turned back to face him. "But she'll be fine?"

"Yes," he nodded.

"Good," she moved to stand, "that's all I needed to know." It wasn't, actually, but she didn't think he'd really just let her leave.

He cleared his throat, and she paused. "What?" she asked.

"Well," he shrugged, "you have your information…"

"Oh," she leaned back again, testing a little smile. "Did you want to know something?"

"Your name might be nice."

"Might it?" she batted her eyes playfully. "It's Annie. Is that nice?" He grinned broadly, though he tried not to. "And you're Ripper, right?"

"Actually it's Rupert," he answered, "but I rarely get called by it."

"Rupert," she clicked her tongue on the 't'. "I see why. I think I'll stay with Ripper."

He looked off, then back. "So how was it you found me? Since you apparently were looking?"

She ran her hands along the bike as her answer, and he nodded with a laugh in his eyes. Annie fished a near-empty pack from her pocket and lifted a cigarette to her lips. "Do you have a light?"

"I quit," Ripper answered.

"You quit, or you're quitting?"

He paused. "Quitting."

"Which means you have a light," Annie smiled.

He pulled a silver lighter from his pocket with a chuckle. "Those things are terrible for you," he placed it in her palm, warm fingers touching her hand with a linger.

"These and everything else in life," she flicked on the flame.

He shrugged. "Plus, it makes kissing an unpleasant experience."

Annie lifted her eyebrows. "Really."

He nodded, lips twitching on a smile.

"So my girlfriend tells me," Annie took a deep draw.

"The brunette?" he didn't blink. "Lovely girl."

She clicked shut the lighter, flipping it back to him. "Anyway, that's for the non-smoker in the kiss. Wouldn't bother me if you don't smoke."

Ripper clicked the flint idly. "So... you've thought about kissing me then?"

Annie coughed uncharacteristically on a puff. She couldn't speak.

"You all right?" he asked nonchalantly.

She took a moment to recover, laughing. "Now that wasn't fair."

His face turned serious. "What, are we playing a game?" He moved closer to her. His voice was low, feral. "Was that round two?" Seductive. "How long do we play?" He placed his hands on the seat on either side of her, and she stopped him with a palm against his chest.

"How do I know where you've been playing?"

"You don't," he laughed low in his throat. "No more than I do you."

She could feel his heat through her hand. His eyes were locked with hers; his breath was sweet. And then they teetered on that perfect moment, when both know what will happen, but each imagines they could stop it if they wished.

-


	5. First Contact

He could hear it in his head, their conversation from so long ago.

"_I did a lot of unconscionable things when I became a vampire," Angel said. He turned back towards her, but couldn't meet her eyes. "Drusilla was the worst. She was... an obsession of mine. She was pure and sweet and chaste..."_

_Cordelia's voice was soft. "And you made her a vampire."_

_His was bitter and hard. "First I made her insane." He met her gaze at last. "Killed everybody she loved. Visited every mental torture on her I could devise."_

_Her turn to look away._

"_She eventually fled to a convent," he continued, "and on the day she took her holy orders, I turned her into a demon."_

Angel sat alone in the office of the Bronze. Cordelia had insisted on working at least part of her shift. She needed the distraction; said that going back to the mansion just then would drive her mad. And the look in her eyes had said she didn't mean it like that, but her mouth wouldn't utter an apology.

And Angel didn't think he deserved one.

It had seemed so simple when Whistler had told him, "…you can become someone… someone to be counted." He had known the risks he would face. He knew his past, and how it haunted him — that's why he'd lived in one gutter or another for decades.

But he hadn't known he'd become part of a family, one that didn't know all that might be in store. He hadn't known how his past might come to haunt all of them.

He hadn't known he'd fall in love.

It hadn't seemed so much to ask, after so much misery. Moments of comfort amidst endless stretches of battle. Those burning dark eyes to gaze into awhile after so much time staring down the dead. A home she filled with real warmth and her unique fire, to return to from the cold and damp of the cemeteries and sewers.

Was it so much to ask?

Then his tortured, twisted ex-lover had come to town, and gone to town, and Angel realized that ninety-five years of wallow and a couple years of penance weren't nearly payment enough for the things he'd done.

She sent assassins and called down curses upon his friends, all the while hoping to touch the evil in his demon heart, a mirror of the sickness he'd lavished upon her over a century ago. And when he rejected her, Drusilla took his beloved, and measured out her unrequited devotion in the thin white stripes down Cordelia's back. And worse, in her dying moments, gifted over the nightmare visions that left him sitting alone in this office, and Cordy out at the bar, numbing herself with work to forget, for a few hours at least, just how much his happiness was to ask.

* * *

The back door to the Bronze banged open onto the parking lot, and Ripper and Annie startled from his bike nearby, their moment lost. Matt the bartender emerged whistling, then smiled once he'd spotted the ex-Watcher and… new friend.

"Hey, Ripper," Matt said, trash bag in hand.

"Hello, Matthew," Ripper sighed. He straightened, disappointed further when Annie's hand left his chest. "How is Cordelia?" he asked.

"Oh, uhm, Cordy's fine," he nodded his head back towards the doorway, "workin' her shift again."

"Well that's good."

The bartender shifted uncomfortably under Ripper's stare. The older man coughed lightly.

"Oh!" he said, finally getting it, and tossed his bag in the dumpster. "I-I'll, uhm, see you later."

Ripper nodded, smiling slightly, and the young man hurried back within. Ripper turned back to Annie, but she was looking back at the door, cigarette at her lips again.

"Is that the bartender, Cordelia?" she asked.

"Yes…" He could see she was genuinely concerned. "She'll be fine," he reassured her. "She has friends inside."

Something in her face looked skeptical. "Including the boyfriend?"

"Angel."

Annie raised her eyebrows, looking back at him. "Angel?" she blew out a cloud of smoke. "Kind of a girly name for a guy that buff."

"Well," he smiled inwardly, "no one picks on him, if that's what you mean." Then he cocked his head, mock frowning. "Buff, you said? Did you like him?"

"No. Too pale for my taste." Which he thought was an interesting way to put it. And, he frowned, entirely too perceptive. Who was this girl? He shouldn't press this. He should just find out information. "So how do your tastes usually run?" (Okay, Rip, not _that_ kind of information.)

Annie cocked her head. "You mean, do I usually go for British bikers in leather?"

He shrugged. "When you're not going for dark haireddark-haired tough girls in leather."

"It depends on the town," she smiled.

"So you're from out of town then?"

Annie nodded.

"Traveling with your friend? To anywhere special?"

She tapped the cigarette filter on her bottom lip. "Listen to you with the Twenty Questions."

"Curiosity," he shrugged.

Annie cocked her head. "And if I don't like a curious man?"

"Have something to hide?" he dipped his head, looking up at her through his lashes.

The girl laughed. "Everybody has _something_ to hide."

Ripper looked off as a boisterous crowd of partiers drifted through the lot. "They certainly do in Sunnydale."

"I noticed you have an interesting town," she said cryptically.

He chuckled. "You have no idea."

She was silent a moment, watching him. "Well, do _you_ care to share?"

Ripper waved back at the two young ladies from earlier in the evening, greeting him with exuberance from across the lot, even hanging onto some just-for-the-night boyfriends. "What, betray my secret identity right here before my fans?" he grinned, while idly looking at the girls' partners for vamp sign without success.

"We could try the alley behind the Circle K," she followed his gaze, "but I think your girls have it covered."

Ripper looked at her sidelong. "I can think of somewhere better than that."

She shrugged an acceptance, flicking away her cigarette. Ripper handed her his helmet, which he refused to let her refuse, and climbed astride. She settled behind him as he kicked the motor to life.

Then her hands slid around his waist and under his jacket, and it was enough to keep him warm as they cut through the cool Sunnydale night.

* * *

Xander double-checked the street and all potentially un-living shadows before he exited his jeep and crossed to the little apartment building. That it was better than base housing was about the only thing going for it, but as long as Willow was inside, it was home.

He saw the light under the door as he slipped his key into first the deadbolt, then the knob. He set the odds at fifty-fifty that the bedspread around her would be strewn with texts on demonology for Ripper, rather than textbooks on biology for class, but at ninety-nine to one that she'd be sleeping, rather than reading.

She was wearing her footy-pajamas, hair strewn about her head where it rested on her arm, face down atop the covers. Xander took the cold cup of tea from the night table into the kitchenette and washed it. Then he turned off her laptop, and started gathering up the books.

"Casey's Demon Physiology," he read aloud to himself from the first spine. "I think the house wins that bet."

Willow stirred just a little bit when he turned her slightly and slipped the covers over her. Clicking off the light and climbing in beside her, he kissed her Titian locks as she cuddled to him in the dark.

"I couldn't stay awake," she murmured.

"That's all right, hon," he whispered, "you can stay awake for me tomorrow night."

* * *

The bike rumbled up an alley lined with wooden, unmarked doors. Ripper settled at the last of them, and Annie could see a wide street around the corner of the building as she unstrapped the helmet and pulled it from her head after climbing from behind him. A sign beside a stoplight read "Main".

She shook out her hair. "What is this, the nickel tour of Sunnydale, starting with your place?"

"Yes. I was thinking of taking you to the Sunnydale Museum next," he shut off the engine and flicked down the stand, "then possibly the Zoo." Stepping past her, he slid a key into the lock and opened the door onto a neatly kept kitchen. If he's a bachelor, she thought, he's got a maid.

Ripper moved to the refrigerator as Annie closed the door behind her. "Something to drink?" he asked over his shoulder.

Helmet in one hand, she shrugged her jacket first off one shoulder, then the other. "Whatever you're having."

She hung her coat on a chair at the kitchen table as he popped the top on two Löwenbräus. Annie drifted over to a dark door at one end of the kitchen, and she reached in for a switch, flicking the lights onto a small bedroom.

Ripper followed her, offering one of the beers. She handed the helmet to him in exchange. "You have the biggest head," she smiled.

He took it from her outstretched hand, and tossed it on the bed. "It's served me well over the years."

Her eyes scanned the room, taking in the many shelves of books, walking about slowly. "I can imagine." She leaned against the edge of his desk and regarded him, bottle at her elbow. "How many years?"

Ripper laughed lightly. "I wondered when that was coming," he took a swig. "Do you try Twenty Questions now?"

"We do like our secrets," she mimicked his swig.

"So it would seem." He shrugged. "But some secrets are trivial."

Annie pursed her lips. "And others are dangerous."

"Is that what you are," he stepped closer, "dangerous?"

"Mad, bad, and dangerous to know," she quoted with a smile.

"That's about standard for this town," Ripper smiled curiously.

"So it would seem," she said back to him, trying to keep her mind on why she was here, but having trouble amid the curious combination of scents — the must of books, the bitter staleness of cold coffee, and the faint trace of not-too-distantly burned sandalwood.

"You'd fit right in," he said.

"Maybe," Annie shrugged, "if I was staying."

Ripper prowled closer. "It grows on you, this town."

"And why is that?"

"Something in the air," his voice was low and seductive. "Like the deep ley lines of magic."

And now we're getting somewhere, she thought. If she didn't know better, she'd think he was just being poetic, which is what he wanted. "Magic?"

"It's all around you," he spread his hands.

"Is that what you are?" she played along. "A magician? A warlock?" ('Cause I can dust one of those, she thought to herself.) Annie gestured at the shelves. "Are these your spellbooks?"

"Something like that," he grinned.

She felt lost in that smile. Trapped in those green eyes. She glanced around the desk behind her, just to look away. Cluttered, not like the kitchen. An open book beside a stack of closed ones, a pen and inkwell (who had those anymore?), half-full coffee mug ("Kiss the Librarian"?), bottle of Tylenol, scribble-covered legal pad, a small globe, pack of cigarettes…

"Oh yeah," she reached for the pack, "you've quit." She looked for a place to set down her beer, without much success. Her hand drifted to the open book, filled with beautiful handwriting.

"Let me get that," he said, setting his beer down on the edge of a shelf and stepping to the desk quickly. He reached around her and flipped the book closed to give her a space to set it the bottle down, which she did. (That was important, a part of her thought, a part she could barely hear anymore.) She turned to give him access, but that just left her pressed against him in the small space between desk and bed.

They both froze, facing each other, their bodies still lightly touching. Ripper couldn't resist leaning in just a bit, not meaning to start anything, just testing the waters, but Annie's arm reached up to his neck in response and she brushed her mouth lightly against his. Even that brief contact was enough to break his resolve, and as he leaned down to initiate a true kiss his hands went round her waist of their own volition.

Annie instinctively shifted her weight into Ripper, a corner of her mind surprised as his kiss began to weaken her knees, and reached both hands to tease through his hair at the back of his neck. Her movement and his shifted her T-shirt and his hands found bare skin, which they began to caress. Their kissing deepened and any remaining thoughts of conversation fled.

The touch set both their skins humming. Annie responded by sliding her hands under his leather jacket and easing it off his shoulders, then smoothing them back up his neck as she started another, yet more intense kiss. With the jacket still on his arms, Ripper found it delightfully difficult to wrap them around Annie as he wanted to. Still kissing, he shrugged off the jacket. Once his arms were completely free, he used them to lift her even with his own height, turning them towards his bed by sense rather than sight.

They fell with Ripper above, but Annie used the momentum, turning them sideways so that she ended up on top. As she straddled his thighs and leaned down for another kiss, her hair tumbling around them both, Ripper's hands resumed running up her sides, raising her shirt. He broke their kiss just long enough to ease the shirt over her head and completely off, too engrossed to try her trick.

_Left my hands free_, the thought flitted through Annie's mind. She sat up and used them under his shirt at the waist of his leathers, beginning to search for the closures. Ripper raised his torso enough for his mouth to explore her skin now exposed, Annie moaning softly when he started at the base of her neck. Ripper used his hands at her hips to guide her up to kneeling as his mouth traveled down the center of her, his hands continuing to slide up her back, stopping at her bra. When his mouth reached her stomach she gasped in delight and sank back, using her strength to take him with her and turn them both so that she was below, wrapped in his arms.

Ripper, of necessity, broke off his kissing and Annie eagerly reached her mouth for his, her tongue entering the fray now. It was Ripper's turn to moan and the brief (though pleasant) surprise at Annie's strength drowned underneath desire.

With Ripper above it was easy to get his shirt off, but a part of Annie smiled as her sports bra with the zipper in front caused him confusion that she could feel through the touch of his hands and his mouth. She started to end their now French kissing in order to push him back and instruct him in this matter, but Ripper quickly proved her underestimation of his knowledge by leaning just far away enough himself to slide his hands around to her front, his fingertips tickling her ribs maddeningly on the way. Even with their oral activity resumed, he managed to locate and undo the zipper by touch, raise her up, and ease the offending piece of clothing down her arms and off to oblivion without any assistance.

Skin brushing on skin pushed them both farther away from structured thought, and one of Annie's last was to wonder how they would get their boots off and still maintain maximum physical contact. Even though both would later recall the intensity and fierce joy of this experience, neither Ripper nor Annie would remember the answer to that particular puzzle.

* * *

Faith sat uncomfortably on the edge of a large freestanding flowerbox that, perched in the sidewalk that ran along front of the rooms, unsuccessfully tried cheering the dingy motel on the outskirts of Sunnydale. She gathered her jacket about herself once again against the cool night, as her eyes continued to scan the parking lot for any sign of Annie.

She shouldn't be worried, Faith thought. They both did this. B would come home, they'd share a detail or two, spooky night, rah rah, and they'd sleep in each other's arms.

But Annie had been bothered tonight, and Annie was never bothered. She'd promised to be back by dawn.

Tracking the goth guy had been mostly a bust. He kept tracking going through cemeteries, and then had gone headed down into the sewers. If he was trying to find her and Annie, what the hell was he doing down there?

And there was definitely something different about him. No one normal could have moved like that. Plus, for all his tracking, Faith had the sense he knew she was shadowing _him_. So maybe he was just leading her on a wild goose chase. She wanted to talk to B; B would know about this stuff.

Yet here it was, sky starting to turn light, and she was waiting on a stupid flowerbox with the impatiens.

Faith took Annie's spare Camel from behind her ear, and held it in her fingers idly. She touched it to her upper lip, smelling the tobacco, and the touch of Annie's fingers. Just a little while longer, she thought, then I'll go inside.

* * *

Ripper pawed the bedside table by his head for a button to the alarm for several seconds before he realized it was actually the phone ringing. The great glowing red numbers on his clock read almost the same as the last time he'd awoken, but for the letter reading "A" instead of "P". He brought the cordless receiver to his ear and stabbed the talk button with a beep.

"Hello?" he croaked. "Angel?" he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. "Yes, of course," he whispered, without immediately remembering why, "I'll be there in a, uhm, little bit. See you then."

Ripper pressed the button again to close the line, and sat up on an elbow. Spying his clothes scattered about the floor, he recalled why he'd been whispering, and turned his head to the bed beside himself.

Only to find it empty.

Probably for the best. If she'd been there, he'd have tried to make her stay. Stay in Sunnydale, stay in his life. And he knew what happened to the women who stayed in his life. He brought them lilies, and kept their plots trimmed and neat.

But what if she _had_ been connected to Cordelia's vision? You certainly mucked up that investigation, old man. _Well, Angel, can't tell you if she's a demon, but I do know she wears a sports bra._ Good show.

Think, Ripper, what did you find out? _She's very strong._ (No, what did you find out that's useful to the cause, _pillock_.) _She's on the run._ Wouldn't admit it, but it was in everything she didn't say. _She was concerned about Cordelia_… which means she didn't cause the vision. Not on purpose, at any rate.

He pushed back against the headboard. _She knew Angel was a vampire._ No, no, he couldn't be certain of that. He might have read into that too much. He _could _say she sensed something was different about Sunnydale. Inconclusive, at best.

So what else?

_He wanted to see her again._ Utterly useless to the cause, but utterly true, nonetheless. Fat lot of good it would do him… she and her girlfriend were probably gone by now.

He rolled, naked, from the bed, deciding. He needed to get over to Angel's before the day got too late, and sitting about missing her accomplished nothing. He grabbed his robe to head for a quick shower, wincing when he pulled it on. At this rate, he thought, that shoulder is never going to heal.

* * *

For the first time in more than a hundred years, Drusilla had watched a sunrise. It was almost enough to make her want to keep this body. But then she thought upon her favorite things… how a dead body looked so much sweeter under a full moon than stark light; how blood had a much richer shade to it in the dark than in daylight; how exquisite a child's simple fear of the dark could be… and she'd turned her back upon the amber streaks spilling over the horizon.

Even the familiar streets of Sunnydale (a name more delicious in the darkness) seemed tainted by the day as she walked them. And with each step, the sunlight wore into her link with the wolfgirl, and the weaker she became. Cursing the light, she pulled at the nearest manhole cover and slipped down in the blessed cool of the sewers.

No, the wolfgirl's body, though it provided many comforts and challenges, was too small and limiting for Drusilla. She thought about the next step in her plan… as if there'd ever been any doubt about it.

Time to visit the old haunts, and old friends and snitches. She had to get ahold of Spike.

They had so _much_ to catch up on, Spike and Veruca and she.

-


	6. Dread

Ripper's bike roared up to the mansion door. As he parked, he saw Xander's jeep and Oz' van already there. Bounding up the steps to the front door, he couldn't keep a smile off his face, despite having woken up alone, as he wondered if Oz had found his quarry. There would be trouble coming with Cordelia's vision, but they had handled such things before, so why worry in advance? He let himself in the mansion with his key. "Angel?" he called, "Cordelia?"

"In here, Rupert," the vampire's voice came from the big living room.

Ripper breezed in the doorway and something in the faces turned towards him made him stop dead. Oz, in an armchair near the garden doors, fists clenched, looking like he'd been gut kicked. Cordelia, near tears, in the Queen Anne; Angel behind her, but by the wall, as far behind his lover's chair as possible while still in the room. Xander and Willow, on the couch, Xander's arm wrapped fiercely around her and Willow leaning into him for comfort. There was a scared, panicked look on Willow's face that Ripper vaguely remembered.

Angel crossed to Rupert and his face was like stone.

"Angel?" Ripper asked.

"I'm sorry, Rupert. Cordelia and I didn't want to tell you until we were alone."

With effort, the older-looking man kept his tone even. "Tell me what, Angel?"

Angel had insisted, earlier, that he be the one to tell Rupert. Not just to spare anyone else the task, not just to take the blame that was, after all, his from the beginning, but to be the first to face his reaction, as either comforter or target. "Cordelia saw Drusilla in her vision. We think she's trying to come back."

All color fled from Rupert Giles' face, rivaling Angel's for lifelessness. Angel felt him tense, sensed his fists clenching, waited for the blow and promised himself not to duck it. The ex-Watcher closed his eyes, breathed deeply, opened his eyes to Angel's and asked, "How?"

"We're not sure," Angel replied.

"How?" Xander's voice was angry, but essentially undirected. "Is that all?"

Ripper's face t turned to him and the soldier was haunted at what he saw there: a face sculpted with tension, and something more terrible in the eyes than Xander ever remembered seeing, even in the demons he'd killed. Except he'd seen the same thing in Angel's eyes.

Angel turned those eyes on Xander and started to move, but Ripper's arm blocked the vampire, not gently. His voice was terribly clipped and cool as he replied, "There's a great deal I could say, Xander, but how she might come back seems to be the most important question." Ripper's arm fell back to his side and Angel retreated behind Cordelia's chair. But he didn't touch her.

Ripper stepped down into the living room proper but ignored the large easy chair he usually took at these conferences. Instead, he stopped by the fireplace mantle, propped one leg on the stepped hearth, and one arm on the mantel. For a moment he lowered his head down on his raised arm, and for a moment, no one dared speak.

Only Cordelia would brazen the silence, her voice gentle. "We called Wesley and Anya, Rip. They should be here soon."

"Right." Ripper raised his head, no sign of tears on the chiseled mask of his features. "What do we know?"

"We don't know how it's possible," Willow said, her voice weak and stricken. "A-Angel sent her to Hell with the sword, and, and Acathla, and we don't know how anyone could come back from there."

Her fiancé frowned next to her. "Wesley was saying something about portals yesterday. Little portals."

Ripper spoke up. "They're usually very small, nothing as powerful as Drusilla could fit through. And I don't think it's possible to open one from Hell, or we'd be up to our ears in little nasty demons."

"More than usual?" Xander quipped, trying to lighten the mood. It didn't work.

Ripper turned to Cordelia, his voice strained now. "Can you tell us more of what you saw?"

Her voice was miserable, and she squirmed in the chair. "Well, it was tough to see, but first there was the big wheel of cheese with the scribbling on it, then a whole bunch of windows with some creepy things outside... and then I saw Drusilla right up against one of them, staring at me." She visibly shivered. "And I could tell she wanted to get in. That she was going to get in. Oh!" she cried. "And fireflies."

"Fireflies?" Oz asked, his first word since Rupert had come in. He looked like someone grasping at a straw.

"And cheese? Add a large pile of drunken fat men, and you've got my Uncle Rory's Summer Wine Tasting Party." This time, Xander's humor did get a brief relaxing of Ripper's face. But only briefly.

"You know, these things are not like IMAX," Cordelia complained.

Angel started pacing. "Anything about the girls?"

"There are girls?" Xander asked.

"Two of them," the werewolf said. "At the Bronze. They might've sparked Cordelia's vision."

"Not necessarily," Ripper said distractedly. "Cordelia's visions are unpredictable."

"One of _many_ words I'd use for them," the bartender frowned. "Along with painful, inconvenient, uninvited—"

"Cordy," Oz soothed.

"What? I'm just saying." She shrugged. "The girls did say they were new in town."

Angel kept looking back at Rupert to see if he could tell how he was doing. "They gave me a bad feeling," he told the ex-Watcher.

Speaking of bad feelings, Ripper thought, as a knock on the door heralded Wesley and Anya's arrival.

Angel went to let them in. They preceded the host into the living room.

"Told ya you should keep nighttime hours, Wesley," Xander greeted them.

"A good night's sleep helps me in being prepared," the bespectacled man replied.

Anya reached over to fix Wesley's tie, which was half an inch askew.

Wesley sighed, then seeing Mr. Giles' usual chair empty, quickly took it. He tried to put his feet up on the ottoman, but it was too far away for his legs and his heels hit the floor. He pretended that was what he'd planned all along as Anya copped the ottoman for herself. "What great and terrible evil do we face today?" he tried to ask brightly, finally sensing that the troops needed morale boosting and that Mr. Giles was unusually silent.

Oz couldn't resist dropping the bombshell. "Cordelia saw Drusilla in a vision; she's coming back to make our lives another big party."

The Watcher's jaw dropped and he looked helplessly from face to face, finally getting a nod from Angel. "But... but... but she's dead."

"She's in Hell," Angel pointed out. "That's not the same thing." As I can attest to, he thought, looking at the top of Cordelia's head.

"Well," Wesley recovered somewhat, "this explains some of the information I have been astutely gathering."

Ripper broke in coldly from behind him. "Demons uneasy, something big, hasn't been felt for years."

Wesley frowned, then cleared his throat. "Yes, well, exactly. I have my notes in the car, but you see, I've been cross-referencing some prophecies from the Tiberius Manifesto with some of the entries we've encountered as per Hume's Paranormal Encyclopedia—"

"Wesley," Oz interrupted, "we don't need to _see_ the math."

"What?" the young Watcher flustered. "Oh, yes. Well, before the next full moon, I believe that a dimensional portal will open, somewhere in Sunnydale."

Angel stopped pacing and turned towards Rupert, as if they were the only two in the room. "Can she get through it?" he asked quietly.

Rupert looked back in the same manner. "If there's a way, she'll find it."

Cordelia bit her lip. Willow's eyes filled with tears. Oz growled from his chair. Even Anya was shaken, reaching to hold Wesley's hand tightly.

Ripper tried to make his voice light. "I'd ask if anyone wanted out, but I might end up talking to an empty room."

"No way," Xander and Anya spoke at the same time.

"Not in Hell or out of it." Oz was deadly serious.

"How could you even ask?" Willow wiped her tears away and sat up by herself.

"Hey, I'm in this whether I want it or not, by virtue of vision," came Cordelia's wry comment.

"He knew we all wouldn't," Xander insisted. "Didn't he, Wesley?" he added pointedly.

Wesley sat up even straighter. "Need you even ask? I am—" his voice swelled with importance even as Xander and Willow rolled their eyes, "—the Rogue Demon Hunter."

Angel looked at Rupert and it was all in his eyes. But he said, so they would all know, especially Cordelia, "This time I'm not stopping till she's dead. This time I kill her."

"Not if I get her first," Tthe hard, brittle edge was back in Ripper's voice. "Not if I get her first.". Finally, he stepped forward and took charge. "Cordelia, I'd like to have you go with Willow to the shop." He turned to the witch. "Have her go through Tascen's Symbology, it might help identify the inscriptions she saw in her vision." Willow nodded, and he continued. "Xander, if there are any resources you can offer?"

"Whatever the base can provide. And that doesn't get me thirty in the stockade."

"Wesley, I'd like you to search for something that describes or even locates this portal."

"Of course. The most salient volumes are back in my collection—"

Ripper stopped him with a raised hand. "Bring what you find to the shop before nightfall. Angel," he said, knowing it was futile to give him any other assignment, "take demon relations. Willy's and everywhere else. Any signs, any hints, anything." The vampire nodded, his eyes gleaming. "And, Angel," Ripper added, "be discreet for now."

Angel nodded, reluctantly.

"And me?" Oz asked.

Ripper turned to him. "You and I are going hunting for those girls, only this time we're going to be serious about it."

Oz nodded once, a feral gleam in his eyes.

"What girls?" Anya piped up.

"Two girls at the Bronze," Willow explained, "they may have sparked Cordelia's vision."

"Did you get their names?" Xander asked the brunette.

"Well I think I heard their names, but then I was having a demon coronary at the time."

"Try to remember," Oz coached.

Her brow furrowed. "I sort of remember one… began with an 'f'… Fay, Fabian… Fate…"

"Faith?" Wesley suggested in a small voice.

The bartender pointed a finger at him. "Faith! That was it."

Ripper blinked, a thought tickling his mind. But it was interrupted by Oz' voice.

"Well that's something to go on, anyway," the wolf said. He drew himself up in his chair. "Are we finished?"

The ex-Watcher turned his attention back to the group. "Yes. Let's get to it."

As the group took to their cars and assignments, Ripper pulled Oz aside briefly. "I never asked," he said in low tones, "did you find the brunette last night?"

"Nope. Just a fewNot even any vampires. I got two and one ran off. NotAnd no a sign in the sewers."

He sighed. "Can you start checking the eastern motels?"

Oz tilted his head. "She didn't tell you where they were staying?"

"No, she was—" Ripper stopped. "How did you know?"

"You didn't ask about the blonde."

"That was silly of me."

"Get any information?"

"Not really," the ex-Watcher admitted, "but the next time I find her, it'll be a very different story. By the way," he added, "her name is Annie."

"Annie," Oz repeated. "Nice."

"I'm beginning to doubt it," Ripper replied.

* * *

Annie let herself into the motel room softly so as not to wake Faith. The brunette was frowning in her slumber, so Annie lowered herself onto the bed and kissed Faith's hand gently. The blemish vanished from the serene face.

She stood again, taking off her coat and undressing quietly. She set the jacket across a chair but it lay funny. Annie reached into an inner pocket and took out her sheathed knife, looking at it a moment before gingerly setting it atop her clothes. She went back to the bed.

Lying across from Faith, Annie tried to remember things as they were before she and Faith had taken to the road. How long ago was that? Annie concentrated, but couldn't place what day this was. Was it two years since they'd left Boston? Three? A long, hard journey here.

No, not _here_. They weren't stopping _here_.

Some nights they'd spent with others, as Annie had last night, as the mood suited. But always, since they'd first become one another's support system in earnest, this had been the truest thing. Annie leaned in to kiss Faith's forehead, her hand brushing a lock of hair behind the girl's ear.

"Love you, B," Faith murmured.

The blonde Slayer smiled, sadly. "Love you too," she whispered.

Annie rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling. She thought of Faith's words the day before. There _was_ something to this town, something in the air that affected her somewhere between setting her teeth on edge and setting her heart on fire. She leaned towards the former.

But she'd had feelings like this before. She was the Slayer, right? (Or one of them, she thought, glancing sideways.) Slayers got these sensations.

So why, she kept asking herself as she finally drifted to sleep, safe beside Faith, did it feel different this time? Why did some voice deep inside keep whispering that perhaps, in this place, she might find a different, truest thing?

* * *

Xander looked in his rear view at Oz' van behind them, and could see the lack of conversation the wolf was having with their old classmate. Cordelia was having a bad time of it, and Oz had volunteered to drive her over to the _R & W_, knowing he was the best among them for peaceful silence.

Xander noticed Willow watching him sidelong. "I can't imagine what this is like for her," he said.

She smiled softly. "And this from the treasurer of the 'We Hate Cordelia' club."

He returned her smile weakly. "Lot's gone on since then, I guess." His face turned serious. "How are you dealing?"

She looked at her hands, her shoulder-length red locks hiding her eyes from him. "Oh, I'm okay."

"Like I'll believe that."

"Drusilla…" her voice was strained. "They hurt all of us, Xander."

"But a few more than others."

She looked out the window. "They didn't touch me."

"Will, Jenny was like a mother to you."

The witch flared. "What do you want me to say, Xander? That this is killing me? Because I remember what it was like. I remember dragging Rupert out of bed every day when all I wanted to do was die. To lie down, just like him. And I remember nursing him back to health again when Dru and Veruca had played their little bondage games. So what is it you want me say?"

He lifted her hand from the seat between them, and laced his fingers with her own. "Nothing." He kissed the back of her hand. "Just want you to know it won't happen this time. We won't let her come back to hurt us again."

She glanced in the mirror. And he realized that Angel had probably said those very words to Cordelia. And Cordelia had probably hoped them true as well, while not entirely believing.

* * *

Wesley had been silent for most of the trip back to his apartment, and that alone was enough to make Anya worry. If there was one thing they had in common, it was an interest in demons and the supernatural (a particular boon in Sunnydale). And normally, with such events in store as what they'd all discussed this morning, Wesley would have been chattering on about prophecies and unnatural forces and various others of his favorite topics. Yet aside from a polite and wholly unnecessary request for her to help him with his research, he'd been entirely lost in thought. And Anya was bored.

"Okay, major vampire afoot, demon portal opening, and you're giving me the silent treatment," she pouted.

The Watcher startled. "What? Oh, ah…" he looked over at her. "I'm sorry, dear, I've just got a lot on my mind."

"Which usually comes spilling right out of your mouth."

He blinked at her.

"And I like that," she explained.

He smiled at her thinly. "Extraordinary," he said. "I was ribbed mercilessly for it at university. Called me Wesley Wyndham Prattle-Pryce."

"Well, they didn't know you," she soothed him.

"Actually, they did, which was part of the problem."

"Okay, they didn't know you like I do then," she frowned.

He thought a moment. "Well—"

"Alright, they were _stupid_," she interrupted. "How's that?"

Wesley took her hand gently. "Extraordinary."

Anya blushed. In twelve hundred years, she didn't think that had happened with anyone else. "So," she took a deep breath, "what is it you're thinking about?"

"Oh, Drusilla, I suppose. Her presence gives an interesting twist to the prophecies I've been studying, one that I'm eager to research." He glanced at her. "I'm also intrigued by what inscriptions Miss Chase saw in her vision."

Anya thought silently. "It's ironic."

"Sorry?"

"That the visions that Drusilla passed on to Cordelia might let us prevent Drusilla from coming back," she mused.

The Watcher chuckled. "I suppose that is ironic. The twists of fate on a Hellmouth." He looked to her again. "I appreciate your helping with the research."

"Of course," she said.

"It may take until quite late… might you be able to stay?"

Anya smile inwardly. Always so proper. "Yes, if need be," she said with mock irritation. Then she puzzled. "Wesley?"

"Yes dear?"

"How did you know the girl's name?"

She could see a faraway look enter his eyes, though he was watching the road ahead very carefully. "Just a small hunch. One I'd like to investigate before I say more."

Anya nodded. Then she heard him chuckle again. "What?"

He took a deep breath. "The twists of fate on a Hellmouth," he said, cryptically.

* * *

After everyone had left on their tasks, there was only silence in the room with Angel. Cordelia hadn't even said goodbye. He sat in the Queen Anne, leaning back, eyes closed.

A room full of people, and not one untouched by his past. Even the one who'd been a demon, he thought with irony, who'd changed his life so dramatically a hundred years into that past. Changed it for the better, whatever else came of his sins.

And nothing more would, he decided.

Discreet, yes, Rupert, but I will find her and kill her even if Hell should bar the way. Angel's eyes opened and gleamed, his incisors starting to show. I already know the way to Hell.

* * *

But for the squeak of glasses being washed, it was quiet. But for the man washing, it was empty. Willy liked this quiet time, mid-morning, vamps gone, demons gone, delivery guys come and gone. It was one of the few points of the day he could really be alone with his thoughts.

Not that Willy had a whole lot of thoughts. But when he did, this was the time he'd go about thinking them. He hated to lose it.

So when he heard the light step just inside the back entrance his first reaction was to get angry. Rarely a good reaction in his line of work, but still, his first.

"Hey, we're closed!" he called out, laying the towel over his shoulder and stretching up to the rack over the bar with the glass. "Don't you guys ever sleep?"

"I think I've been sleeping quite long enough," responded a low, dangerous voice, and the glass never made it to the rack but instead shattered on the concrete floor.

"Ver, uh, Veruca…" the barkeep spun on his heel. "Long time, no see."

The she-wolf emerged from the shadows of the back room and approached the bar slowly, looking around casually, as if she were just out for a country stroll.

"I, I didn't hear that you were up and about," he tried to sound casual, poorly. Shards of glass crunched under his feet and he dove to start gathering them up. "Word on the street was, you might not be visiting us for a, awhile." He stuck his head back up above the bar. "You know, what with Oz hurting you pretty bad and all."

She looked at him askew, kept touring the room. "Kept it quiet," she said. "_Keeping_ it quiet."

"Oh, uh, yeah," Willy stammered, "of course. Mum's the word." He crossed his arms on the bar, still kneeling. "Is there something I can help you with?"

Veruca stopped over by the far wall. Her voice sounded funny to Willy, but he couldn't place it. "Looks different." She met his eyes. "Did you change it?"

His eyes shifted about. "No, not really. Oh!" he brightened, "I did get the new light," he pointed behind the bar, "from Black Angus."

"No," she shook her head. "Looks bigger."

Willy cocked an eyebrow. "Same size." Then he realized he was kneeling. "Well, maybe from down here."

For some reason that seemed to click with her. Eight months in a coma must do that to a person, he guessed. Willy started to climb to his feet, and suddenly found himself reeling, nose bleeding from having struck the bar. He hadn't seen her move, yet her small hand gripped his hair tightly and she pulled his face close to hers.

"I want Spike," she growled, low and savage. "Find me Spike, and I won't come back and rip your tongue out." Then she moved closer, sniffing him deeply. His teeth chattered. Her eyes seemed to roll back in her head at his smell. Then she let him go.

"I'll see—" he began automatically, then stopped as her eyes popped open. "I'll get him." He daubed the towel at his bloody nose as she turned and walked away.

"You do that," Veruca said, before she vanished into the shadows and out the back again.

-


	7. Memories

Cordelia's hand was starting to cramp, and her eyes were starting to blur. She'd drawn and erased what she could remember of the scribbles in the cheese more times than she could count. Every once in a while, Willow would peer over her shoulder and offer a "hmmm", then snatch up the paper and scan it into a computer program she was working on. Cordy wasn't sure whether the whine of the scanner or the magic shop's cloying mixture of old books and strange herbs was getting to her more. She lowered her head to the table.

"More tea?" Willow's voice startled her back upright. The witch's pot was poised over her cup. The brunette sighed and shook her head, and Willow stepped back behind the shop's counter, filling her own cup beside her terminal.

The _Runes & Wicca's_ main front room was spacious. After the library, Rupert had needed a place for his collection, so he'd sold his loft and opened the _R & W_. Though hardly any customers browsed the shelves, much less sought to buy any of the volumes, the vast array of tomes gave the shop character. Or at least more so to Cordy's taste than the cabinets of hideous creepies that passed for spell components and talismans to Sunnydale's bevy of Goddess worshippers. Spook factor very high on those. Yet for the most part, she had to give Willow points for the décor. Even her computer had been disguised with a dark wooden cabinet (and who knew that Xander had that kind of hidden talent?), accented with delicate crystal fetishes that were probably some sort of anti-virus wards as well as being nice to look at.

"I don't know how much more I can draw here," the bartender rubbed her eyes. "Or if any of these are right. Have you found anything yet?"

Willow sipped her tea. "A couple of things have turned up. Mostly the demon equivalent of 'do not disturb' signs so far."

"Aren't I supposed to be looking at some book?" Cordy frowned.

The redhead laid a hand on a thick volume on the counter. "Tascen's Symbology. But I wanted to get your first impressions before I threw you into it."

"This isn't a pop quiz, Willow. You don't have to hide the teacher's edition from me."

Willow smiled slightly as she carried the book over to the table. "Well, plus I wanted to try out my new computer program."

Cordelia flipped through the pages silently for a moment or two. "You miss it, don't you?"

Back at the terminal, Willow's fingers clicked at the keyboard. "Miss what?"

The brunette didn't look up. "Teaching." The clicking stopped. After a moment, Cordy raised her head. She didn't have to look to know that Willow was staring at the framed portrait on the wall, the one so many customers regarded wistfully as they waited as well.

She was wearing a short, flower print sundress and black, ankle-strapped heeled shoes, toes painted black to match, sitting on the stone steps at the back of a green cottage in Breaker's Woods. She was bent forward, elbows on her knees and hands clasped beneath her chin. An old watering can was beside her, and a few fallen leaves were strewn about the steps. The half-smile on her face spoke of many mysterious things, and Cordy wasn't sure if she was more Jenny Calendar, Computer Teacher in the picture, or Janna, beloved daughter of the Kalderash.

If only she'd gotten to finish that curse, none of this would be happening. So much wouldn't have happened.

Rupert had taken the photo, and sometimes when Cordy looked at it she felt, looking at Miss Calendar's expression, like she was intruding on a private moment.

Like right now. "Sorry, shouldn't have asked," she said, and Willow looked at her. "Bad timing."

Willow shrugged. "No, it's okay. There is no good timing, I guess." She resumed her typing. "I do miss it some."

"So why didn't you go to Oxford? Okay, maybe overkill for getting a teaching degree, but you could have gone anywhere. Anywhere but here," Cordelia said bitterly.

The witch kept looking at the screen, but Cordy didn't think she was seeing it. "I… couldn't leave him." The brunette knew she wasn't talking about her fiancé. "Anyway, UC Sunnydale is a good school."

Cordelia chose not to answer that. Paging through the book in her hands, she also tried her level best not to wonder why Willow's reason seemed both so familiar, and so fragile.

* * *

Oz' cell phone trilled from the seat beside him as the van drove along the eastside strip. His lack of luck continued as Devon, his band's new lead singer, spoke from it rather than Ripper.

"Dude…" came the greeting.

"Devon," Oz replied. "Kind of busy."

"S'alright. What'cha up to?"

Oz slowed with the traffic at a stoplight. He tapped the steering wheel impatiently. "Looking for a girl."

"Alright Oz!"

The wolf rolled his eyes. "Devon. What did you need?"

"Oh, I just wanted to know if we had a set list for tomorrow's gig."

Oz rubbed his eyes. "We have a gig scheduled for tomorrow?"

Devon sounded aghast, which under better circumstances would have been funny. "Yeah man, at the Bronze."

Sunday night, at the Bronze. Well, if he cancelled they'd only be disappointing like three people. But that was possibly premature. Meeting at the Bronze wasn't too much worse than meeting at Ripper's. Other than the complete lack of weapons or research tools. "Hey, Dev, I'm gonna have to get back to you."

"Oh, okay. But, uhm, is there a set list?"

"Well, since I completely forgot about the gig, I'm thinking no."

"Okay, cool. Thanks man."

"Glad I could help. See ya." He tossed the phone back to the passenger seat as the light changed and the traffic started forward again. He should check the Downtowner Apartments Motel next; it wasn't too far. Assuming this wasn't a wild goose chase.

He shouldn't get irritated with Devon, he knew. A few years back, that was how Oz sounded. (Well, except for the repeated use of the word "dude".) Getting excited about a gig, or finding a girl for the normal reason one found girls.

And what ever happened to the E-flat diminished ninth?

But he knew what had happened. His cousin Jordy biting him had happened. Ripper and Ethan had happened.

Veruca had happened.

It wasn't all of the bad. When Willow and Xander had first taken him to Ripper, Oz had been a mess. Of course, so had Ripper.

Oz had known Mr. Giles casually when the man had been his school librarian. He'd also known the shy Jamaican transfer student Kendra, from a couple of his classes. He'd seen Kendra in the library almost every time he'd gone there for research (rare as that was) or to pick up something by one of his favorite existentialist writers (more often); so Oz knew when the girl had become another of Sunnydale's mysterious deaths that the librarian had taken it hard. But then Miss Calendar, the school's computer teacher, had been murdered, and the librarian had resigned his post. Oz figured to never see the mild-mannered Englishman again.

Actually, he'd been right. For the man that his friends had taken him to wasn't very much like that librarian at all.

When Oz had first woken up naked in the woods outside Sunnydale, and started piecing things together, he'd first fallen into a funk. The suspicions he'd had over the years about the town began to make some sense to him. But then he realized the sort of role he'd fallen into in Sunnydale's scheme of things, and the funk had escalated to a near panic. At last he had turned to the smartest person he knew, the somewhat nerdy but ever sweet Willow Rosenberg, a quiet but observant girl he had seen often at school. Though she'd been dating the sort of clownish Xander Harris since earlier that year, Oz somehow felt she might have some insight to the _real_ Sunnydale, and anyway, he was getting desperate.

As luck would have it, Willow and Xander knew the town's underbelly quite well. Still, he'd been dubious when they told him a friend named "Ripper" might be able to help him, and even more so when they'd dragged him to a seedy private dive and the leather- and T-shirt clad, chain-smoking man they were referring to. It took Oz ten minutes to even recognize Mr. Giles. He surmised that that's what happened to you after you found your girlfriend murdered in your bed.

Yet somehow, Oz and Ripper had managed to hold one another up. And over time Oz had gotten the complete Hellmouth education with the help of the occasionally trustable Ethan Rayne, his classmate Cordelia's "older" boyfriend Angel, and, of course, Veruca.

So now, two years later, he was using those same skills that had haunted him in those first few days to make his hometown a safer place. Not a bad thing.

It was only, he thought, pulling into the parking lot of yet another motel, that the life of an unsung hero sometimes even lost the joy of self-satisfaction. Maybe he should play the gig. It might be a good moment's calm, amidst the coming typhoon.

* * *

Faith came out of the bathroom toweling her hair, wrapped in her precious fluffy robe, monogrammed with the logo of the Four Seasons in Chicago, where she and Annie had stolen a night some time back. Those people really needed better security, she smiled to herself.

B was still sound asleep in the bed where Faith had left her, twisted up within the sheet and paper-thin blanket, one leg and the opposite shoulder exposed to the room, but little else below her disheveled mane. The brunette tossed her towel on the back of the chair at the obligatory desk and bounced down on the side of the mattress, but her companion didn't awaken as she'd hoped. So she walked two fingers up Annie's bare thigh until the blonde extricated a hand to brush at the ticklish sensation. Faith linked her fingers with Annie's then, and planted a series of warm kisses up Annie's arm until she saw the eyes flutter open, and then spot her, sharing a tired smile.

Annie untangled herself enough to push up on an elbow, while Faith continued her progression up to finally plant a lingering kiss on the blonde's lips. But then she pulled back.

"Eww, morning- _and_ cigarette-breath," Faith mock- frowned, and Annie swatted at her. "I used your apple shampoo again," she ran her fingers through her hair, "I keep forgetting to buy some."

"Typical," Annie rolled her eyes slightly, but brushed her cheek alongside Faith's, and breathed deeply. "But it smells nice."

Faith popped up from the bed and began to rummage through her duffel as Annie lowered her head back to her pillow. The blonde Slayer watched as Faith dropped her robe and started to dress. "What's got you all perky this morning?"

"Afternoon."

"Whatever."

"I don't know… this town. It's freaky," Faith fastened her bra behind her and reached for a tank top.

"Tell me about it," Annie concurred.

The brunette smiled at her. "Waking And waking up with you. I missed you last night."

Annie looked at the bedside lamp idly. "Long night."

Faith hesitated. "Yeah, well I was worried about you," she said at last.

The blonde met her eyes. "You know me…" she forced a smile, "five by five."

Faith looked away, then shook herself. She rummaged again for some makeup. "Well, you know, strange town," she headed for the bathroom, leaving the door open to keep talking as she parked in front of the mirror. "Literally." She did a quick eval in the mirror before applying anything. "So, any lead on the bartender's boyfriend?"

"Not really. Nothing… substantial. You?"

"Nope. But there was definitely something going on with my guy."

Annie cocked her head. "How do you mean?"

"Well, for one thing? If he was looking for us like we thought, he was doing it in some weird places. Like, he kept traipsing through cemeteries and stuff."

Annie sat up again. "I'd give that a thoughtful 'hmm' if that wasn't the place to find us on a normal night."

Faith stuck her head back into the room. "Or he lives there." She disappeared again. "He also went down into the sewers."

"So you're thinking vampire?"

"I don't know," she said. "Maybe something else. I did have the feeling he knew I was following him, though."

"Faith?" Annie's voice was worried.

The brunette came back out of the bathroom. "Well maybe not _me_, but he thought _something_ was on his tail. Then there was this time when he just jumps over this nine foot iron fence, like it was nothing… like he was on springs or something." She tossed her supplies back into her bag. "I didn't get a vamp vibe, but these guys aren't human."

Annie smiled inwardly. "Mine was."

Faith looked up at her tone. "Excuse me?"

The blonde looked at her. "Hmm?"

Faith put her hands to her hips. "Mr. Buddy with Vampires, and you _sleep_ with him?"

"I didn't say that."

The younger Slayer snorted. "You didn't have to."

Annie looked away, sighing.

Faith shook her head. "Great. That's just great. I waited up half the night for you."

"Faith, it wasn't anything… it was just—"

The other girl held up her hand. "Save it." She looked away for a moment. "Look, this isn't a jealousy thing, you know that."

"So what is it?"

"You said recon only, and then you're getting horizontal with this guy."

Annie shrugged, not understanding.

Faith's voice was hard. "Last night you're totally paranoid about this place. In front of me. We split up, and suddenly it's nothing."

"It wasn't nothing—"

"You keep protecting me."

Annie stared at her. "What?"

"You heard me. So we ran into some vampires, so what? This place is like a hundred other towns we've been to."

"No, it isn't. You just said so yourself."

"Stop it."

"Stop what?"

"Stop treating me like a kid. I'm eighteen."

Annie pushed back against the headboard. "Oh, yeah, you're eighteen, you know the world."

"I seem to remember bringing _you_ back from the dead, Annie."

"Yeah, I was there."

"So, what," Faith shrugged angrily, "I can be trusted with your life, but not with mine?"

The blonde tapped her temple. "Think, Faith! This guy was looking for you in a cemetery. He knows something."

Faith was exasperated. "God, Annie, he doesn't know _anything_! Listen to you, you're paranoid! I mean, you fucked his friend, did his friend know anything?"

Annie fumed silently.

The brunette took a deep breath and tried to hold her voice steady. "We have traveled the entire way across the country, Annie. No one has followed us, no one has been looking for us besides the cops we got on our own tail."

"You don't know them," the older Slayer's voice was quiet.

Faith approached the bed. "No, but I know you. And you have this, this notion that you're responsible for me. We blow the foster home 'cause you think someone's after us, and I'm like, whatever your reason, I'm just happy to be out of there."

Annie turned haunted eyes on her companion. "You don't believe me."

The younger girl sat on the edge of the bed. "I believe in vampires. I know you knew about them somehow, but you won't tell me how. I've gotten little bits and pieces, but you keep everything you can from me. We've come three thousand miles, B, and I don't know shit about who it is you think is chasing us."

"We've had this discussion. I, I want to keep you safe."

"From _what_, B? I can't be safe from something I don't know about." She raised her hands. "The best I can do is pretend this Council of yours doesn't exist."

Annie's voice almost trembled. "You can't…"

"Can't I? All I need to know is how to kill vampires and demons, right?" She stood and shrugged. "So far, so good. I'm still alive. Maybe there _is_ nobody. Maybe knowing about vampires just made you crazy."

"Crazy?" the blonde's eyes narrowed, and she tossed off the covers. "You think I'm crazy?" Her arm whipped out and grabbed a metal lamp stand beside the bed. "Is this crazy?" She stood and picked it up, then bent it in half easily. "If I'm talking about nothing, how'd I do that?"

Faith took it from her hands and straightened it back out. "I wish I knew, Annie. I wish I knew how we can do that, but you won't tell me." She threw the lamp down. "What am I supposed to think?"

Annie took a deep breath to regain her composure. She reached out a hand. "Faith…"

"Don't _Faith_ me!" the brunette recoiled. "I'm not a fucking kid! God, haven't we been through enough together? Just _talk_ to me."

Her companion looked at her. "I—"

Faith waited, hoping.

"I can't," Annie sank to the edge of the bed once more.

Faith snorted. "Yeah," she said. "Yeah, I didn't think so." She grabbed up her jacket.

"Where are you going?" Annie asked apprehensively.

"Out," the younger woman stated flatly. "Patrol." She scooped her shoes from the floor, not bothering to put them on before she headed for the door. "Maybe find a Mr. Happy and not do recon on him first."

"Don't go."

"I can handle it." And she slammed the door behind her.

* * *

The sun was slanting strongly across Rupert's desk as he came back into his room. It shone like a spotlight on the journal still out from yesterday, the one she'd almost read before both of them got… distracted.

He tossed his helmet on the bed as usual, then pulled out the chair and sat. The thought that had flitted through his mind this morning had been niggling him as he prowled the motels. When it finally took root, he had to return here and investigate. Anyway, he needed the break.

Rupert slid his fingers along the spines of the leather volumes, marked only with start and end dates. They hesitated over the one that contained the time he was looking for, and after a moment he noticed his hand was shaking. He gathered himself and plucked the book from the shelf.

_June 3, 1997_

_That I write these words is evidence that the disaster for which I've been planning, as per my previous few entries here, has been averted. That is to say, the rise of the Master, the ancient vampire known in life as Heinrich Joseph Nest, has been thwarted, with, as my Council advisors would say, minimal loss of life. Given that the entire prophecy as foretold by the Pergamum Codex came to pass, I suppose I should feel lucky. But I do not feel lucky._

_I don't, in fact, give a damn about the slaying of Heinrich Nest. Neither, at this moment, do I give a damn about the survival of Sunnydale, or the sealing of the Hellmouth itself, open for a time during the circumstance._

_My Slayer is dead._

_Even that is not fair to say. Her name was Kendra. Kendra is dead._

_The Council will frown on the previous two paragraphs; they see the Slayer as an icon, a tool. "My" Slayer is a foreign idea to them, and I doubt half of the members even know what her name was._

_Bugger them._

_Kendra descended into the buried church that housed the Master just after sunset yesterday. He managed to drain her enough to empower himself and break the seal of the Hellmouth. Angel and young Xander brought her back to the surface, and she managed to kill Nest while the rest of our brave group held out against the other demons. Their final battle was on the school roof above the Library; it ended when she and the vampire plunged through the skylight and down to the floor. Nest was impaled and vanquished. Kendra died in my arms._

_Our small service will be held tomorrow; Mr. Zabuto, Kendra's first Watcher, will be flying in later today. We were her only family, he and I and my other young friends. She was taken from her parents almost from birth by the Council, as they are wont to do with every Slayer._

_I have already spoken with Mr. Travers, in fact. He assured me the search is closing in for the next Slayer, whom they believe is located in Boston, Massachusetts. Her name is apparently Faith, though from how he said it, it seemed he was reading that from a file folder, not that such _personal _attention should surprise me. In any case, he seemed to wish to convince me, for a reason I cannot fathom, that the debacle prior to Kendra's calling wouldn't be repeated._

"Rupert?"

The ex-Watcher hurriedly brushed at his eyes. "Yes, Willow?"

"I didn't think you'd be back from your search so soon," the young witch said from the doorway, teapot in her hand. "Does that mean you found something?"

He cleared his throat. "Not of yet. Have you heard from Oz?"

She shook her head. "I was going to make some more tea for Cordelia and I. Would you…" her voice trailed off as she stepped further into the room. "Are you okay?"

"Fine," he said, but his voice betrayed him. "I'm fine," he turned his head away, trying to focus on the passage to make his point. "I'd love some tea," he said.

_Yet it seems the Council is as far from properly organized now as when they assigned me some months ago. They have assigned a neophyte Watcher named Wesley Wyndham-Pryce to this undiscovered Faith. Privately I believe this is because they suspect she won't last very long, untrained even until her calling. No need to waste a proper Watcher on a lost cause. Once I read the Codex, my own suspicions became that this is why Kendra was reassigned to me from Mr. Zabuto. Her death was inevitable and very likely soon, and the "lost Watcher", as I've been called behind my back, was sufficient for that. Though this had crossed my mind many times before, I had always hoped to outdo the Council's expectations. But I did not. In the end, I failed my dear little girl._

He heard the clink of the teapot on the desk. From the corner of his watery eyes, he saw her kneel down beside his chair.

_Mr. Travers said I was to return to England after I'd put my affairs here to rest, but I cannot imagine fulfilling any task they might set for me back home. I can't quite wrap my mind around anything at all at the moment, but for this blinding grief. Is this how all Watchers feel, if they are so unfortunate as to outlive their Slayers? Did Dr. Mitsuda grieve like this for Hiroko? Herr Klein for Greta Braiden? Mr. Merrick for young Buffy Anne, only a trainee, in those last moments for both?_

Willow took his hand, and he felt the tears slip down his cheeks. Rupert looked at last into those liquid eyes, then lost himself in sobs as she wrapped her arms around his waist in comfort. And they were like that for a long time, neither saying a word, even as the tears dried, and the light faded from the window, his eyes staring into space, her head atop his knee.

* * *

Annie sat on the bed, back against the headboard, staring at the sun-framed curtains on the window. She wanted to get up and follow Faith. Faith couldn't understand what they were up against. To someone like her, fate didn't exist. You made your choices, and your life went a certain way.

But Annie knew that was a lie. You only thought you had choices. Fate was a hungry animal, and whichever way you turned, you were still bound to end up in its mouth.

Some part of her still thought like Faith, though. Maybe, she hoped, you could outrun the animal. You _had_ to, or else you might as well sit down and let it eat you. So they hopped train after train, always moving. Annie wanted to go out and track Faith down, argue with her on the way out of town, but going, nonetheless. Yet she couldn't bring herself to climb off the bed.

She covered her eyes. Then opened them again at the whispering. At first she thought it was from the next room, through the wall behind her head. But when she listened again she couldn't place it.

Annie checked the clock radio without success, and the television was off. She heard a scraping. High pitched, like… fingernails on glass.

Swinging her legs to the floor, she rose and, drawing on Faith's robe, started for the window. The curtains were dark now. She shook her head; she must have dozed off for a little while. The noise was now a scratching, like a dog pawing at the door. Probably the guard dog the manager kept.

She continued towards the window. The whispering was definitely from outside. Must be the manager come to bug them about staying the extra day. She slipped her hand behind the curtain to push it aside, and her palm was suddenly cold. Annie pulled it back, flexing her fingers. She clenched a fist and blew into it to warm her hand, and could see her breath. The room was like ice.

Annie hugged herself in the robe, and pushed the curtain back. She thought she saw a woman in the dark outside, caught a glimpse of dark hair just at the edge of the pool of light spilling from behind her through the window.

She started at a pounding on the door. Peering around the curtain, though, she could see nothing. The blonde Slayer stepped over and peered through the peephole. Again, nothing. She sank back from her tiptoes and puzzled.

Another knock.

Annie slipped the chain on the door and cracked it open. Faith stood outside.

"Forget your key?" Annie asked, opening the door wide.

The brunette stood there. "Something like that," she said.

Annie left the door ajar and headed back for the bed. She needed to get a blanket against this cold.

"Can I come in?" Faith said.

Annie froze, her back to the door. "It's open, right?" she said.

"Can I come in?" Faith repeated.

Jaw trembling, Annie turned around very slowly. The other woman looked at her blankly. "Let me in, Luv," came a voice that was not Faith's. Annie shook her head, tears spilling down her cheeks.

The girl backed away from the door, backed into the darkness. "Help me…" she said, "kill me…"

Annie clenched her fists, then dove for the stake on the nightstand. She ran out the door.

The figure was gone. Then, to her right, she heard a deep, dangerous snarl. Not a vampire's growl, but like an angry dog's. She backed away. Something prowled forward, into the light. It was not a dog. It was bigger.

She heard a laugh from behind her, farther along the motel front. She eyed the room's door, judging how fast she could move, but the door was closed. She didn't have the key.

The creature growled again, poised, watching her. Saliva dripped from its mouth. She felt something brush her from behind, and started. The creature bared its teeth, and Annie turned and sprinted for the corner of the motel. The office was that way, if she could make it. The beast pounced—

—and Annie rounded the corner into a giant chamber. Torches burned all around her, but at the room's far end danced a column of lights beneath a crystal chandelier. All about was silence.

Annie turned back around, but before her was only darkness. She could feel eyes upon her, but see nothing.

"Annie…" came Faith's voice.

She turned back around once more, and all about her now were demons, fighting with people she didn't recognize. But she couldn't hear them. She walked forward, towards the column of light, but no one noticed her. Past the column was an arc of mirrors. She thought she saw Faith within them, and hurried forward to them. Annie looked about for the Faith that had cast the reflection, but didn't see her.

Suddenly Ripper was beside her. "I need you…" he said, then turned back to fight a scaly yellow demon with horns.

Around and around she looked, then heard Faith's voice again. "Help me."

Annie looked up, mirrors at her back, and saw her companion to the right of the column. Faith was pointing a crossbow right at her. Before Annie could duck, the wolf-beast leapt from the darkness onto Faith's back. Annie tried to move, tried to run to Faith, but couldn't.

"She was pretty," came a whisper from nowhere, "such a pity."

The mirror shattered behind her, and two hands grabbed Annie's shoulders, as a dark-haired vampire lowered her fangs to Annie's neck and bit her.

Annie sat up from the bed, soaked in sweat. The clock read past seven; the curtains were dark. She jumped from the bed and started for her clothes.

She had to find Faith.

-


	8. Mouthful of Ashes

As the sun headed for the horizon, Oz headed for his usual set of graveyards, breaking off his search. The moon was already high, and he was getting too restless to continue. No word yet from Rip, either.

He was early enough to see a few straggling visitors in Shady Hills, in the newer plots near the crematorium. Oz made a mental note to swing back by here nearer sunset, before he trudged off towards the older crypts, where he'd lost a vampire the two nights before. Mr. Danvers, one of the groundskeepers, nodded a greeting to him from across the way.

Such was Sunnydale, where you knew the cemetery workers by name.

Oz trudged up a winding path to a hill cresthillcrest, the sun reflecting ruddily off the polished marble stones. Beyond the peak, a circular pond was lit to molten gold, shimmering as a central fountain sprayed gently into the air. He gave it a quick glance, then kept moving around the walkway above it. The view always tugged at his heart; this place should have been a park, not what it was.

He was approaching a cluster of mausoleums when he hesitated, his nose picking up a familiar scent. Apples and leather, just as the evening before. No tobacco this time.

A feeling sent him to a crouch as he sniffed the wind. He caught movement across the pond, and thought he saw a head of dark hair. It was moving away. He couldn't tell if he'd been spotted.

Oz glanced towards the brightening moon. He hated calling up the wolf while it was still so high; he risked it taking over from him. But he had to be sure. The musician closed his eyes and listened for the rhythm of the magic in the land, and to the beating of his heart.

When he opened his eyes, they were much darker. He squinted in the suddenly bright light against his dilated pupils, and sniffed the air again. Sensing the direction of the wind, he spotted the source immediately.

He was right, she didn't appear to have spotted him. Oz slipped closer, keeping behind the tombstones, as quietly as possible. There was no doubt, it was his girl. Faith.

Oz held himself in check from approaching further. In the light of day, she was even lovelier than he'd thought last night. She leaned against the wall of a mausoleum, eyes on the surface of the pond, something held loosely in one hand. Her dark hair was parted in the center and hung to her shoulders. Again she wore leather pants, this time with a blue-on-black print tank top that hugged her curves. She had a tattoo on one arm, a dark symbol of some kind.

But it was the look on her face that drew him. Mournful, he thought, and terribly lonely. Her full lips almost quivered. Oz felt his heart melt.

Then he heard a sound behind him. With effort he tore his eyes away, and looked over his shoulder. It had come from the Degenheart crypt, one of the larger ones in the cluster he'd passed moments ago. Probably the first stirrings of an unwelcome resident, as the sun descended. Possibly even a nest, given the tomb's size. He knew he should recon first; if it was a nest, walking in without backup was not particularly smart.

Still, Faith hadn't heard the sound, and if she was new in town she had no idea how bad an idea hanging out in a cemetery after dark was in Sunnydale. Warning her would make him look crazy, and possibly be ignored. On the other hand, if he could spook some groggy vampires into the sun, he might actually survive a solo attack.

With one last glance at the dark haireddark-haired beauty, he decided to chance it.

The Degenheart mausoleum faced the west. Oz sat atop his heels with his back to the wall beside the gated door. He took a quick glance over his shoulder and in. At least six forms slumbered inside. He snatched back his head and took a deep breath. He could feel the sweat trickle down his brow. Okay, maybe he wouldn't survive. He pulled a stake from his belt and clutched it tightly.

The sun was only a few minutes from the horizon. Now or never.

Oz gripped the metal gate and tested it gently. It had been rigged to be locked from within, but it was an old latch and he could see the rust. He closed his eyes and felt the pulse. He felt the snarl build in his throat, and the muscles bulge on his arm as he pulled.

The metal gave way with a groan and a snap, and Oz rolled inside. He sensed motion on all sides and realized there were more than six bodies in here besides his own. He scrambled to the back of the crypt as blanket- wrapped creatures slowly rose from their perches.

Nine bays, three on each wall, including the one at the back. The one that was still in the sunlight. Oz reached above his head and tugged on a blanket, hard, and the vampire was yanked off his bed and rolled, exposed, to the floor, where he promptly burst into flames.

The wolf used the distraction to stand and grab the other two blankets above his head, one in each hand, and repeat the maneuver. Flames and dust filled the air.

Three down, six to go. Then his luck ran out as the dust cleared, the fire quenched, and Oz realized the sun had set.

* * *

Mostly Faith was just walking, putting one foot in front of the other. Like she'd been doing for the last three years, though this time without Annie. Faith didn't mind the moving so much, town to town, state to state. It was doing so with Annie that mattered.

Still, for awhile now, in the back of her mind, reaching LA had become a goal. A place where B might feel a little safe, where maybe they could stay still. Jumping trains was one thing at fifteen when you want to take on the world; at eighteen, after three thousand miles of taking it on in all its seedy glory, was another.

Annie had been through some serious shit long before Faith had met her. Faith knew a few details, but most got relegated to Annie's ever growing list of "I don't want to talk about it" subjects. Faith let a lot of that slide; she knew what that was like. So she and Annie lived in the now. And the now, and the now.

The sun started to descend as she was passing a shopping mall and the walk turned into an actual patrol. Faith slowed a moment, watching people come in and out. She was never sure whether to be sorry or envious that they didn't know about vampires and demons. She tried to imagine for a moment what her life would be like if she didn't know, but that would mean no Annie. Faith shook her head. She was never good with what-if's anyway.

She was also not very good with brooding. She needed action, something to keep her mind occupied. It didn't take her long to find a cemetery; the town was full of them. Faith hopped the fence and walked through the garden of stone, ears alert. After the bunch last night, she didn't think she'd find any more vamps, but if she was lucky she might scare up a demon or something. She couldn't hear much except the muffled tears of a grieving couple near the newer plots.

Didn't work. Her mind kept returning to her fight with Annie. Why wouldn't Annie trust her? Faith wandered past a reflecting pond and leaned up against the marble wall of a mausoleum by its shore. She loved Annie so much. She would love her forever, but maybe she wasn't right for her. Faith had never really imagined it would be just the two of them for the rest of their lives, but then she'd never much thought about the rest of their lives until recently. Still, she loved Annie enough to want to reach her, and after all this time Faith really thought she had; she thought she'd earned her trust. Maybe it didn't work that way. Maybe she couldn't be the one to reach her.

The creak of iron turned her head just as the sun was touching the horizon. Showtime.

The brunette Slayer kept low to the ground as she slipped towards the sound. There was a group of mausoleums ahead, and with a quick glance she spotted the gate to one standing open. Her eyes flicked about the grounds left and right, but she saw no movement. Then from within the doorway she saw the flare of flame. Someone got up a little too early.

Faith sprinted to the stone building. Back against the wall by the door, she held her breath at the cloud of dust that billowed from the doorway, an odor like that of old books burning sharp in her nostrils. There was more movement inside, and she clutched her stake and counted silently.

3… 2… 1… thrust… poof.

More sounds came from within: a multitude of growls, one distinctly off key from the rest. A fricking nest? What the hHell was this town? Not even Cleveland was this bad.

Faith knew she shouldn't go in alone. If it waswere a nest, they'd be back here later. Time enough to bring back Annie, if she could get her companion to get past her paranoia for a few minutes.

But then Faith remembered the couple she'd heard crying a few moments before. If they were still around, they'd be the first targets. There was no time to get Annie. There was no time for anything but going in.

More scuffling from inside. Faith squatted low and reached for the iron gate. She yanked in it back just in time to clobber another attempted escapee. Bounding up, she pulled in it open again, the vamp's arms entangled amidst the bars, and thrust her stake through its back.

She pivoted back around and into the darkened interior of the mausoleum. The air was thick with undead ash, and from the sounds of scuffle she knew something else in here was in not vamp-friendly. But she didn't have time to sort things out as another heavy body ran into her. Faith grabbed a bier for leverage and knocked the offender backwards. Working on sound in the blackness, she reached out high and low, grabbing hair and shirt, and wheeled the vamp back around. The blunt edge of the stone shelf struck its neck, and with the Slayer-enhanced swing, separated head from torso and Faith let go as the individual parts crumbled in her hands.

The maneuver left her in an awkward position, though, and the next escapee knocked her backwards and into the iron bars. The gate opened and she rolled with the blow, but the vampire was past her. Faith twisted and sprang, and caught its coattails, bringing them both to the ground, tumbling.

The creature kicked out with a leg and knocked itself free, but only far enough to turn into Faith's next onslaught. With little room to swing her fists, the Slayer settled for a grasp and hold, but again the vampire twisted, pinning her beneath it. She brought her legs up and planted her boots enough to thrust it off, then flipped herself to a crouch. Behind her she could hear another vampire sprinting through the grass. Faith feinted towards her opponent and watched him stretch to full height before spinning and sweeping out its legs. The vamp fell flat on its back and Faith staked it quickly before bouncing up again to sprint after the one she'd heard flee.

There was more sound from the crypt behind her, but she didn't have time to look. Instead she ran towards the cemetery entrance and the recent gravesites. If she knew her demons they were just stupid enough to abandon running for their lives for a case of the munchies.

The couple had gotten halfway to the parking lot when the vampire bore down on them. The woman's companion had pushed her behind him but she'd stumbled on the ground. He was struggling, shoes a foot above the groundearth, throat in the beast's grip. The man was barely breathing; Faith had no time for stealth.

The vampire heard but never saw her arrive, as Faith slid through the wet grass like the dirt before third base and took out its ankles with a sickening snap. The man fell full length atop the creature with a gasp, and the beast pushed him up and off, then sat up right into the point of Faith's stake.

The Slayer stood and shook off the bumps and bruises as the man crawled to his companion and held her tightly. Faith searched back the way she came with her eyes, then gestured for the couple to rise.

"You two need to get going, fast," she said, eyes and ears still on alert. "It's not safe here." She heard them climb to their feet, then a hand touched her shoulder. Faith turned her head, annoyed at their inaction. But her brow furrowed on seeing their faces.

"Thank you," the woman's voice trembled with pent-up emotion. She was shaking. "Thank you…"

"It's all right," Faith tried to soothe her, touching the woman's shoulder. "Are you okay?"

The woman nodded, and her friend wrapped his arm around her. Then his face told Faith they were no longer alone.

The Slayer spun into a fighting stance, stake at the ready. A giant, burly figure in full vamp face stalked out of the dark towards her. It was not in the best of shape; its arms and chest were bleeding, raked as if by sharp claws. Faith tensed for its attack — but one never came as the creature collapsed in front of her, a vicious, hairy animal on its back, fangs buried in the back of the vampire's neck.

The Slayer's eyes were wide as the vampire howled in agony, a cry quickly cut off as the wolf — for that was the closest equivalent she could imagine — bore down with its teeth. Then it pulled back, pinned the vamp's head to the ground with one paw, and sliced through the demon's neck with the claws of its other. The vamp crumbled.

Faith resumed her fighting stance as the wolf reared up and howled at her threateningly. She turned her head to the couple, who had gone white again. "Run!" she yelled, but they were frozen. She did a spin kick to the wolf, knocking it from its feet, then turned back and grabbed the man's shoulder. "Run!" she shouted at him, and this time he obeyed, taking the woman's hand and pulling on it. She too came out of her stupor, and they sprinted away. Faith turned back to the beast.

It was back on its feet already, facing her. It looked past the brunette Slayer, and Faith shifted to block the way.

"Uh uh," Faith warned the wolf, "if you're still hungry, I'm the one you want. 'Cause you ain't getting them."

The beast looked at her curiously.

"What, are you chicken?" she taunted. "I'm just a girl, and that was a big ol' vampire you just got."

It bared its teeth at her, growling. Faith didn't wait for it to pounce, she spun back and sent him backwards and to the ground with a quick leg sweepkick to the chest.

"Of course, I got _five_ vamps, but who's counting?" Faith leapt atop the prone creature, pummeling a bit, looking for somewhere soft to put the stake.

The wolf kicked out, knocking her away enough to break free. Scrambling a few feet away, it sniffed the air, watching Faith, then retreated.

Faith knew she should follow, but she couldn't shake the expressions of the couple she'd saved. She and Annie had spent so much time out here in the war zone, and so much of the rest running, that they hardly ever saw the faces they saved. The ones they protected.

This was the thing that Annie had lost. This was what Faith had to tell her. They weren't just running; they were saving people. And that was worth staying for.

* * *

At the Sunnydale's Richard Wilkins/Sunnydale Airport, a private jet requested permission to land. It was the same jet that had taken Sunnydale's recently departed mayor on his travels. .

Now it was in the possession of a man just as dark, but with a vision slightly less grand.

A hand slid up the shade on one of the plane's many windows, all of which had been closed against the light of the setting sun. A sculpted, handsome face under short-cropped blond hair peered down on the rising electric night below. There was no sign of happiness at this homecoming.

"Welcome to Sunnyhell," the vampire Spike growled.

* * *

Annie wasn't sure how she'd wound up on Main Street again.

For a small town, this place had its twists and turns. It was probably all the fricking cemeteries; Annie was used to orienting herself by the one or two per town, but here there was another one every time she turned around.

There was no sign of Faith. Annie was forcing down her sense of panic, but imperfectly. Twice she'd seen dark heads of hair and choked back false hope. There was a girl outside a 7-11 with a bruise on her arm the shape of Annie's grip who was probably still in terror because of the Slayer's mistake.

There was a weight on her chest that she couldn't lift. Annie knew Faith was in trouble. She _knew_ it. "The Slayer dream is highly useful," she could hear that gruff voice saying. "While your other dreams tap only your unconscious, the Slayer dream taps the future, a conduit of time opened by the mystic energy of your lineage." Something was building here, and Faith was heading right into it.

Annie started at the sound of a motorcycle. She instinctively melted into the shadows before she even located the noise. Then, across the street, she saw him pull out from the alley and around to the corner. She held herself in check; she wanted to step out and yank him from the cycle, demand information about this town, about his undead friend, about just what kind of danger Faith might be in. Then she glanced at the front of his home. _Rupert and Willow's Runes and Wicca_ read the sign, the first part in small letters, the latter in large. She remembered his collection of books. She remembered the one that he'd closed on his desk. When it came time to confront him, it might be better to have some knowledge beforehand, some sense of whether he was lying or not.

Annie waited until Ripper's bike was around the corner and well down Main before she angled across the street. There was movement within the shop; she was not surprised to see the pretty bartender from last night at a table within. Behind the counter was a redhead of about the same age. Would that be Willow? Ripper's daughter, maybe? A puzzle for later.

The lock was easy and, thankfully, the back apartment was dark. Annie padded silently to the door at the front of the kitchen and listened. She cracked it slightly; it led to a store room, the smell of herbs very strong within. The doorway at the other side, leading to the store front, was hung with strings of beads. Atmosphere for the tourists. No sound from beyond but the shuffling of pages and the hum of a computer fan. Annie closed back the door.

She sealed Ripper's bedroom door behind her as well before she flicked on the overhead light. Examining the bookshelves again, the titles were so obvious she was ashamed she didn't see this last night: _Mysteries of the Occult_;_ Creatures of Darkness_; _Barron's Guide to the Undead_; one merely titled _Vampyr_. Hundreds of titles, all in the same vein. Annie ran her fingers over the spines one by one. Well, with this kind of collection, he clearly knew _something_ about this stuff. She could learn everything she never wanted to about being a Slayer from this room.

Of course, there was nothing conclusive here. Ripper might just be a professor of mythology or something. She smiled. No, from what she knew of him so far, professor didn't seem to fit.

Annie turned her head at a sound from the front of the store. Voices. She needed to hurry.

She looked over the shelves of books again. What was the name of this town? Sunny-something? There had to be something more useful here. A book of local history maybe. She could hear Faith's angry voice in her head. Annie bit back her fear again. Why had she let Faith go?

Moving to the next shelf, eyes still scanning, she spotted a collection of relatively unadorned volumes. Actually, several sets, two volumes, five volumes, three volumes, eight volumes… nothing on the spines but dates, each set slightly different than the others. Annie looked at them curiously. The dates went back decades. She turned her head, and spotted another shelf, full of the same types of books. These went back much further, some hundreds of years. Journals?

She looked at the desk again, thinking. The volume from last night was still there, and now another lay beside it. She stepped over by the bed. Turning the book, she looked at its spine. The only adornment was a date, from last November. The other tome had two dates.

Directly above the desk was a full set, thirteen volumes in all. The dates on these went back almost four years.

Annie cocked her head at the sounds from the store front again. Something familiar about the voices. No, about one voice. She felt a tightening in her stomach. Again she raised her eyes to the spines above the desk. She looked once more at the dates. This wasn't possible.

Then a part of her laughed. Of course it was possible. What was it he used to say? _You can never escape your destiny._ Faith was wrong. She could smell the rancid breath of fate's open jaws. Her hand trembled as she reached for the first volume above the desk. She had to catch it as the book nearly slipped from her suddenly nerveless fingers. Annie set it down atop the desk and, taking a breath, tipped open the cover.

_September 4, 1996_

_I begin my assignment here in Sunnydale in the guise of, of all things, a high school librarian. Not that this is particularly far fetched; indeed, it is a nearly perfect camouflage. My understanding is that few if any students here at Sunnydale High will endeavor to take advantage of the facilities, so our necessarily clandestine activities may find easy purchase. Also, the school's collection will hide my own reference works neatly amongst them. After the Museum, this may be a dull day to day vocation, but as cover it should be splendid._

_There is only one wrench in the works, as these Americans would say: I have not yet found the Slayer._

_Still, I have few worries. The Council's research has been extensive. Their best examiners have found many signs pointing to this area as the next home of the Slayer, though after the demise of poor Greta, the gap has been troublesome. My own research so far pinpoints Sunnydale as a focus of mystical energy, something the Spanish missionaries called Boca Del Infierno – the Mouth of Hell. It would certainly be fitting to find the Chosen One here. If nothing else, of course, Mr. Zabuto's trainee Kendra is ready to take up the mantle._

_Still, I expect to find the Slayer soon. "She cannot escape her destiny," my old mentor Mr. Merrick used to say._

Annie held her mouth against retching.To read her Watcher's words after just hearing them in her head was too much. She couldn't breathe.

Fleeing to the alley once again, any pretense of stealth forgotten, Annie gulped the air, hands on her knees and head nearly between her legs. Long moments passed as she steadied herself. Her eyes burned. Her skin was flushed. She was weaker than she could ever remember.

She wasn't in the mouth of fate; she was already down its throat.

Ripper was a goddamned Watcher. She'd fucked a goddamned _Watcher_ last night.

Then, when at last she could hear above her heartbeat, the voices nudged her again. Annie slipped back inside, listening. Apparently no one had heard her flight, for the voices still came from the front of the store. What had bothered her about them before came back to her with a sickening clarity. One of the voices was terribly familiar.

The blonde Slayer opened the storeroom door again. Trying desperately to be quiet, she moved to the wall by the forward entrance.

"…the Ellington Chronicles have a mention of portals near a Hellmouth, but I couldn't cross-reference other events from this time period." Another Brit. The voice she was terrified that she recognized.

"I understand." A young woman. The redhead, maybe.

"Are you certain Mr. Giles will get all this information?"

"Yes, Wesley."

"Shouldn't you write this down?"

"It'll be fine."

"Perhaps I should stay until he returns."

"You're certainly welcome to, but I don't know how long that will be."

"I'll… just sit here with Miss Chase then."

"Gee, thanks." The bartender.

"You don't mind?"

"Nah, make yourself at home. Maybe you can help me figure out this book."

Annie took a deep breath. She retreated in her mind three years. She could picture it in her head: a thin, well dressed, bespectacled man with an English accent, asking around Southy for a girl named Faith. A very _strong_ girl named Faith. Following him for blocks, from schoolyards to private gyms to neighborhood hardcourts. Wanting desperately to get him in an alley for just a minute or two.

She backed into the shadows, then snuck a look through the hanging beads. She felt tears sting her eyes, but she refused to let them fall. God, he was even wearing the same suit.

Annie remembered to turn off Ripper's bedroom light before she went out the back for good.

-


	9. Too Far Gone?

The door slammed so hard when Annie came in that Faith thought for a moment it might come off its hinges. She watched her fellow Slayer from the bed as the emotions crossed Annie's face one after another: relief, affection, worry, and then something akin to terror. Then, without a word, the blonde closed the door behind her, and began gathering Faith's scattered clothes and stuffing them into her duffel.

"You sending me packing?" Faith asked.

Annie didn't look up from her task. "We're leaving," she answered, opening her own well-worn suitcase.

"We're running again?" her voice was flat. "Geez, I'm shocked we waited so long."

The other Slayer wouldn't be baited. "I saw the guy who was looking for you in Boston."

That gave Faith momentary pause. The possibility, so long remote, that Annie's unspoken history with her mysterious "Council" might be real, not imagined, became much more concrete. But it was only momentary; she remembered that couple's faces. "Annie, no."

"Don't argue with me, Faith. I'm not letting them find you."

"And if I want to be found?"

Annie raised her head from packing, looked at her blankly.

Faith stood from the bed. "Somewhere inside, I know there's a reason why I'm different. Why we're different. I'm sick of running from it." She stepped towards her companion. "This _place_ is different, B. There's a reason we got off the train here, I know it."

The blonde stared at her with haunted eyes. Her voice was strained. "We're different because we're freaks, Faith. And those people who are looking for you," she pointed towards the door, "want to use you. They want to send you out against these… _things_, night after night until one kills you. Then they'll do that with the next freak. They don't care who you are, just _what_ you are." Her dam cracked, and tears began. "You, and everyone you love, are expendable to them. I won't let them take you," she sobbed.

It was more than Annie had ever said about it. Faith enfolded Annie in her arms, trying to comfort her. She felt her eyes sting, attempted in vain to stem her own flood. "Oh God, B, they did this to you, didn't they? They used you like that."

Annie lifted her head from the brunette's chest and kissed her fiercely. "They can't have you. You're mine."

Faith cried softly. This was so hard. "No," she whispered, after a moment. "I saved people tonight, Annie. I think that's why we're here."

* * *

Spike entered Willy's with such velocity his billowing duster gave the illusion of flying. He leveled the first demon he encountered with no provocation but his own rage.

Willy, behind the bar and nose bandaged already, was not looking forward to this.

The blond vampire looked about the tavern for a few moments, forcing eye contact with every bloodsucker and night creature that tried to avoid it. He could feel the unease on his skin like a rash. When he'd left, there'd been some hard feelings. The Mayor was defeated, Veruca was in a coma, Drusilla had been long gone… he'd had no stomach for staying. But many of the devils and demons that survived the wargames of the bloody Watcher and his band of White Hats had felt Spike should have stuck around to help them regroup.

To Spike the decision had been simple: continue to live on the Hellmouth, sharing the food supply with a hundred other vamps, or grab what he could of the dead Mayor's fortune and head for bloodier pastures.

He didn't relish returning. He liked being _summoned_ even less. From his brief stare-around, he couldn't tell who'd have the nerve. The vampire turned to the bar. Time to beat the answer out of Willy.

The bartender set a glass of pig's blood on the counter as the vampire approached. Spike lashed out a hand that the snitch cringed from, but the fingers laced around the glass rather than the man's throat. "Thanks, mate," Spike said, and took a swig. "I'm guessing this is on the house."

"Well sure, Spike, anything for an old friend," Willy fawned.

The vampire crooked a brow and glanced around. "You have a friend here?" He wiped his mouth on a sleeve. "'cause I'm wondering who to send the sympathy card to." And he lifted the greasy man two feet off the floor. "Who in the _bloody_ Hellmouth _summoned_ me? Like I'm some sodding dog to be ordered about!"

In the tense silence of the room, there was a whistle from the corner. "Here, Spikey Spikey… here boy!"

The vampire went paler than usual. Willy wasn't sure if it was in rage or fear, but he was hoping for the latter. The blond man lowered Willy slowly, then turned wide eyes in an arc that seemed to take minutes to complete. It dawned on Spike finally that the room's thick tension was only half for him, and that it had been bubbling through the bar long before he arrived, due to the small blonde figure in the last booth.

"Well, well, look who's awake," he smirked. His boots thumped on the hardwood floor as he approached her.

"And yours was just the ugly mug I wanted to wake up to," Veruca replied. She gestured to the other side of the table, and Spike flopped down to the bench there. In an instant the wolf's own bootheel was planted in his crotch and his back was pressed to the rear of the bench, retreating as far as possible in the tight space. "So why wasn't it there when I did?" she finished.

Spike gamely tried to keep his voice at a level pitch. "Now, now, luv, you do know it's been awhile since you… went under."

"Quite a while," she answered cryptically.

"And you were taken care of."

"While you went off and enjoyed yourself."

He pushed her foot away. "It's in my nature," he shrugged. "You can't fault me for that. You'd be doing the same thing. In fact," he took a swig of the blood, "I think that was part of the plan, wasn't it? Enjoying ourselves?"

"And I bet you never gave me a second thought, did you?" her eyes bore into him with a strange fire.

Spike leaned forward. "I thought about you plenty. Part of why I left was from thinking about you, lying there." He sat back again. "But a man's got to move on eventually. Get on with his unlife."

Veruca's eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly.

"Come on, luv, things are different now," Spike raised his hands. "You're awake. Reason to celebrate, I'd say, 'stead of sitting here, brooding about. Why don't I get you a drink and we can have at it?"

She considered, smiling slightly. "Sounds like my Spike, looking for that dark cloud behind the silver lining. Alright."

"What can I get you then?"

Veruca eyed his glass of plasma for a moment oddly. "Wine," she said. "Red."

* * *

Annie whimpered in Faith's arms. "No, no, no…" she cried. "Don't think like that. That's how they want you to think."

The younger Slayer could barely breathe against the breaking of her heart. But this had been building in her too long. She tried to be gentle. "B, I'll always be yours. But what if this is what I'm meant to do?"

"No…" Annie's small body shook.

"I…" the brunette could hardly hear her own voice. "I don't know what else to do."

The other Slayer lifted her head, looked into her face. "Stay with me." She kissed Faith tenderly. "Run with me."

Faith closed her eyes. "I can't."

Her companion pushed back from her grasp. Annie's tear-stained face became splotchy and red with anger. "You wanna go to them, fine! I'll give you the fucking address!" She stalked to the nightstand and grabbed the flimsy pad of paper there that the motel left for their guests. She scribbled on the top sheet, then threw the pen down. From the back of her belt she drew out her knife and slammed it point first into the note. Then she stalked for the door.

"Annie…" Faith tried, but the older Slayer wouldn't turn. "B…"

Annie held up her hand to cut Faith off. With the door open and herself halfway through it, Annie paused. "You won't always be mine. You're already theirs. I just tried to keep you safe. I love you." She turned away. "If you go, don't expect me to be here when you get back." And she closed the door behind her.

* * *

Malek, the Kailiff demon bouncer at _The Underground_, had been his usual gruff self. "Like I told Ripper last night: I ain't heard nothin', and I ain't seen nobody." No amount of threats would budge him, which meant it was likely the truth. It was like that everywhere, so Angel wound his car slowly through Sunnydale's darkened streets towards the _R & W_ with a heavy heart and no new information. He wanted to go back, find _something_, but it was starting to get late and Cordy was probably in need of some sleep, since she'd had virtually none last night. She could crash in Rupert's room, of course, but he'd feel better with her at the mansion.

He couldn't be sure that she'd want to go home, he thought, sidling the car up to the curb on Main, but he had to ask. He had to know how far gone this was.

Angel paused before the storefront window, his step tentative, and glanced within, standing silently for a moment. Wesley sat at a table, shuffling papers of some kind, while Willow leaned over his shoulder. He couldn't hear their discussion easily but, eyes searching for and not finding the reason he'd come here, Angel didn't care at the moment. His chest tight, he stepped quickly towards the shop door, hand reaching for the knob.

A voice from the shadows ahead stopped him. "You know, for a supposed master of skulking, you're not very observant." Cordelia leaned back against the wood-paneled front of the store, hands holding her elbows against a chill.

"Cordy, what are you doing out here?" Angel could hear the unintended harshness of his voice but not prevent it. "Don't you know how dangerous this is?"

She scowled. "I'm two feet from the door, _Dad_, and yeah, I think I have a clue about what Sunnydale is like at night." Her voice was dark. "Even this night."

The vampire stepped up to her. He took her in: dressed all in black, from boots to slacks to belt to tank, she looked every inch his girl. When did that happen? Cordy's hazel eyes watched him closely as he laid a palm on her bare arm. She glanced down at his hand; he didn't remove it.

"You're cold," he said.

"I needed air," she shrugged.

"You finished?" he nodded towards the door.

"For now," she sighed.

"Say good-bye," he told her.

"Alright," she answered.

Willow and Wes looked up as she stuck her head through the door. "My ride's here. You need me?" she asked politely, knowing they didn't.

"Get some rest," Willow said, cutting Wesley off before he could decide otherwise.

Angel hovered until Cordy got into the car, eyes examining every shadow. When he got behind the wheel her eyes were closed, head tilted back against the headrest. He started the car and pulled away in silence, not wanting to disturb her.

"We have anything new?" she asked after a moment.

"Not from me," he answered, his voice revealing his disappointment. "How 'bout you?"

Her eyes remained closed. "Nothing Hellmouth-shaking. Wes and Will are following up on the symbols I remembered clearly."

Angel grunted an acknowledgement.

The streets passed in the eerie Sunnydale quiet for a while. Glancing at her, he could almost see the thoughts crossing her mind from her fleeting expressions. He knew what that was like.

She raised her hands to her face at last. "God, I hate this place. My whole life, I've hated this damned, dinky town. I wish we could just keep driving, just get out of here."

How he shared that desire. But… "Cordy—"

Her eyes, open now, were pleading. "Just play along with me."

Angel felt his insides clench, looking at her. "Lots of places to see on the road." He faced front again. "Of course, most tourist spots are for daytime viewing."

"Not everything closes at sunset. And I have good night vision."

Angel smiled. "Ever seen the Grand Canyon by moonlight?"

She slid closer to him on the seat, leaning against his arm. "Not yet."

He put his arm around her shoulders. "How about Niagara Falls?"

"I hear they put spotlights on that one after dark." Cordelia snuggled to him. "Rainbow colored spotlights."

"That would be nice to see."

"How are you on room service?" She cocked her head. "With a few side trips to the local butcher, of course."

He smiled. "I can live on it for awhile." He watched the road. "Should we just keep going, or maybe point ourselves somewhere?"

"Anywhere without a Hellmouth."

"Highway 101 is a beautiful drive." He smiled down at her. "Even at night."

Angel could feel her almost purr. "I'd love to go to L.A. Get a decent apartment. Mingle a little."

"Meet some stars?"

"Please! _Be_ a star maybe."

He kissed the top of her head gently.

"Still," she sighed. "I'd feel guilty, not helping people." Cordy frowned. "Ripper and all those damned goody-two-shoes have ruined my perfect little spoiled life."

Angel pondered. "Well, we could keep helping people. Must be _some_ demon activity in L.A. We could do a little work on the side when you're not being a star."

She smiled again. "Maybe we could drag one of those ex-Watchers along to help with research. Call it 'Chase Investigations'."

He cleared his throat. "…or maybe 'Angel—"

"Don't go there," she gave him a mock stern look.

The vampire smiled, and drove on in silence.

* * *

The mausoleum was a step down from the posh trappings the Mayor had provided, but at the moment, neither Spike nor Veruca cared. Well, Spike wondered briefly why his wild wolf-girl had led him inside when she usually preferred the great outdoors for a good shag, but only briefly.

Veruca's mouth tasted of wine; her skin of musk and salt. Spike listened to her moans and growls echo in the murky, sheltered space as the clang of the door shutting behind them faded. He tuned himself into her signals and sounds as he ran his hands over her clothes and lips over her neck. It had been awhile since they'd been together, and he wanted to relearn her a little.

Spike pulled her against him, his back to the door. He slid down slightly, and raised her up slightly, so their bodies were more level with one another. He planted his boots a little apart, and ran his hands down her back, only his fingertips touching, ten spots of sensation through the cotton of her shirt. Her mouth left his and her teeth nibbled over his chin and the top of his throat. As she pressed into him their hips met, and she murmured into his chest. Spike's palms slid along her rib cage, forward around her body. He felt the muscles tense beneath his touch. His hands were firm so as not to tickle her, and he lifted her up further, his mouth brushing against her hair, his lips feeling the texture of it. He reached her ear and his tongue traced it lightly. He felt a snarl in her throat and her hands gripped his arms tightly.

He walked her backwards deeper into the tomb, her eyes closed, her flesh burning. The fading light of the setting moon slanted through windows coated with dust, revealing a surprising opulence. Heavy velvet drapes hung ceiling to floor, broken by gothic scenes in marble relief. Two great sarcophagi stood near the far end, just before the caged front of a fireplace, from which gentle kaleidoscopic lights sparkled.

Veruca's elfin form clung to Spike with lupine strength. The vampire loved her barely checked savagery. As they reached one crypt he lifted her by the hips and slid her back atop it, but Veruca's legs scissored around him and wouldn't let go. Their lips mashed, breath in gasps, seemingly exchanging the air in one another's lungs. Her hands were under his jacket and her nails raked his back, so painfully Spike wondered if the change was upon her.

"I've missed this, Spike," she said, her voice a rasp.

"Me too, love," he answered between kisses. "Hated the thought of you all broken and limp in that bed."

Veruca chuckled mysteriously. "Longer than that, darling."

Spike's brow furrowed, but the thought was lost as she bit his lip playfully. Her hands slipped out of his coat and slid up over his shoulders. The vampire leaned forward against the stone coffin, tilting her back over it, but she reached a hand to its surface and deflected the two of them so that he fell first, she atop him. Her hands finished their upward journey, fingers around his neck gently.

Then the rasp was gone, and her words had a strong and hauntingly familiar accent to them. "Much longer than that, pet," Drusilla said, as her hands clenched down fiercely, brutally, on Spike's pale throat.

-


	10. History

Oz' hand kept returning to his chest as he drove. Definitely a bruise there, if not a broken rib or two. He'd never been kicked that hard by a _vampire_.

Not that that last brute from the mausoleum had let him off lightly. He'd feel a few of those hits tomorrow, but most of that had been taken care of by the wolf inside.

But that kick to the chest Faith had given him… damn. Who _was_ that girl?

The lights were on at the _R & W_, as they might be all night since the gang was in research mode. Oz pulled the van to a stop behind Wesley's Escort. Just the man he needed to see.

Willow was behind the counter at her computer, and Wesley was searching among the shelves of books. Otherwise the store was empty. Oz frowned.

"Not the party I was expecting," he said as the door closed behind him.

Wesley imparted him a very brief glance. "Myself either."

"Oh, hey, Oz," Willow smiled at him in her cheerful-in-the-face-of-apocalypse way. "Yeah, uhm, Cordy was here all day, and Angel took her home to rest. Xander called, he'll be home, er, here in a while."

"Anya is at my apartment researching the geometric alignment of portals and Hellmouths," the Watcher added.

Willow noted Oz' crooked eyebrow. "Ripper's still out. Or, back out, actually."

The young man nodded. "Still… progress?"

"Oh, yes!" the witch said excitedly. "I've found loads about the symbols Cordelia saw. I can translate almost all of the ones we identified." Her face fell. "Except that's only about half of the ones she saw."

Wesley sighed. "And we have no idea of the sequence, which is critical."

"So…" Oz bit back his frustration, "not really."

"'fraid not," the Watcher answered.

Willow shrugged sadly. "But, you?" she asked pleadingly.

He touched his chest again. "Need info on a girl."

* * *

Faith folded the paper back again and, recognizing a van parked a few doors down, clenched it in her fist for a moment before slipping it into her pocket. She didn't need the address — when her guy had doubled back to that club (The Bronze, she thought she remembered a sign saying) last night, that had been his wheels.

She glanced about quickly before sidling up for a glance through the storefront window. Yep, that was her boy, talking with two people she didn't recognize: a pretty redhead behind the counter, and a stiff in a suit. He must the one Annie pegged as her stalker from Boston. Faith tucked her hair back from her ear and focused in for a listen.

* * *

"You found one of these young women?" Wesley asked, his heart quickening.

"In a manner of speaking," Oz shrugged.

"Did you speak with her? What did you find out?" the Watcher tried to keep his voice level.

"Didn't have much of a conversation. I was a little fangy at the time."

Wesley's brow furrowed. "You encountered her on your patrol?"

Willow's face showed her concern. "You had to change? Oz, is everything all right? Are you hurt?"

"Nest. I'll live."

"A _nest_? You took on a nest by yourself?" the witch was beside herself. "Are you _crazy_?"

Oz smiled slightly. "Careless, but alive." He became serious again. "So what do you know about her, Wes?"

The Watcher looked startled. "Me?"

Oz nodded expectantly. "You knew her name. There's a reason."

"Just a guess, really," Wesley demurred.

But the wolf held his gaze. "I saw her in Shady Hills, and just afterwards found the nest in a mausoleum. I thought if I'd gone for help she'd get killed, so I went in. Got lucky with three, a fourth gave me hell, and the rest took off. When I finally chased my fourth down, Faith had killed the others. All of them."

Willow looked at him blankly. "She'd killed…"

"…five vampires. By herself. Then she just about broke me in half when she thought I was threatening her. Which… wolf," he shrugged, "makes sense."

Wesley's heart was in his throat. Was it possible? Could his quarry really have come _here_? Found _him_?

Oz bent to catch his eye. "Still waiting."

"I'm sorry?" the Englishman brought his attention back to the present.

"I've never seen one, but it's not too big a leap," Oz said.

"She's a Slayer." Willow finished his thought.

Wesley took a deep breath. "I need to examine the Council's materials."

"I'm going with," Oz stated.

"Rip's got all the Watcher Diaries in his room." Willow offered.

Wesley shook his head. "There are more detailed materials on future candidates in my collection." He looked at Oz. "Shall we?"

"Will?" the wolf looked at her.

"Oh, I should stay. Xander should be along soon… and Ripper."

He smiled. "They have these things called phones."

She smiled back. "Well, I'd like to wait… we can join you later."

"You shouldn't be alone."

She raised her hands. "Hello? Wicca? Magic shop?"

His voice was firm. "Lock the door."

"Yes sir," she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.

* * *

She waited until both car and van pulled out before coming out of the shadows. Faith could hear the tinkling of keys. She pulled the door open before they could be used.

The redhead jumped back, startled. Faith held her voice level. "Oh, sorry, didn't mean to scare you."

The young woman tried to cover her embarrassment. "That's okay, just startled, not scared. But—"

"So," Faith cut in, "this is a Wiccan shop, huh?" she stepped past the girl and looked around. "Never been in one of them."

"Uhm, okay, but—"

Faith picked up a crystal sphere off a shelf. "You sure this isn't just for tourists?"

The redhead was flustered. "No, it's genuine. Well, you need to be adept…"

"At magic?"

"Yes. Uhm, look, we're actually closed, I was just locking up—"

"And you are?"

"Huh?"

"Adept at magic. You're Willow, right? You do real witchcraft and stuff?"

She was completely tongue-tied. "Uhm, yes, well, you see—"

Faith was in front of her in a second. "'Cause, you know, gotta study, no time to fight a witch." And the Slayer dropped Willow with one punch, the poor girl unconscious before she hit the floor.

* * *

It had taken until the fourth fight and suspension from school before Aunt Arleen had given up on Buffy. That was just over a year since she'd moved there, to Illinois. She didn't think it was particularly bad there, other than the complete lack of anything to do whatsoever.

That's not a conducive environment for a girl with, well, post-traumatic stress disorder, really.

If there had just been something interesting about the people there… like, if they stayed up past ten o'clock for instance. If it hadn't been so dead quiet at night, out there in the farmland. When there's nothing but the sound of wind in the corn, you can imagine a lot into every murmur.

So she would go to school tired, every day, and the kids would avoid her ("the crazy Valley Girl"), or whisper about her, and after a while, it would all lead up to her kicking someone's ass.

She was eleven.

Annie paused at a street corner, somewhere in east Sunnydale, and took a deep drag of her cigarette. Her breath shuddered as she let it out. The light changed, she crossed Whatever Street and headed up Who Cares Lane.

Boston was just about as fun at first. At least she had heard of Aunt Arleen. Delores and Freddy? Buffy had a feeling they were the _other_ relatives no one talked about.

They were seriously against belligerent, and Buffy's reputation had apparently preceded her. So, fighting, not tolerated. Which, actually, no biggie. Boston was loud. No one gave a crap about where Buffy Summers had been, or what she'd been through. She was just New Girl. That had its own challenges, but she could deal.

What did her in were grades. Who'd a thought? You're not burning buildings down, not beating other kids up, you maybe have a friend or two… what's a lousy French grade worth bothering about? Or math? Or history? Or… okay, Mr. School Counselor, I see your point. Yep, I saw it six months ago. And six months before that. And there's no need to get in my face about it. No, I'm not going nowhere fast, I have plans to just be cool… no, not hang out drinkdodrugs cool… drop the smile buddy no I don't have issues, I'm dealing don't lecture me you think you have problems you ain't seen don't talk about my family and drugs and gangs 'cause you don't know anything you don't see them no I don't need to visit the nurse for a damned Prozac screw you no swearing and _shit_ Freddy I know it's not right to hit a counselor and is that my stuff Delores? You know what, fuck you guys too.

* * *

"No, I'm not cold, and no, I don't need a flyer for your shelter," Annie said flatly to a guy who probably fancied himself as Sunnydale's savior. "But do you have a cigarette?"

* * *

"Summers, Buffy Anne. You've had your tour?"

"Yes," she responded, too tired and shell-shocked to care about the fat lady's tone.

"Room thirteen. And there's nothing unlucky about it, so keep quiet. And you're sharing, but that's life so no complaints about that either. You need directions?"

"No."

"It's usually 'yes ma'am' or 'no ma'am' or 'Mrs. McMurdle' will do but it's your first day so I'll let it slide."

"Okay."

"Don't forget your box."

The hall stretched on forever. It seemed they'd taken thirteen out of sequence and stuck it after eighty or something. The box — her life, tattooed with a Magic Markered "B. Summers" — was lead in her arms. Two intolerably dimpled and perky blondes were playing checkers or some damned thing on the right side of her new room.

"Hi!" Blonde A said when she entered. "You must be Buffy! I'm Tracy, and this is Blonde B." Actually she said Heather, but so what?

She offered a thin-lipped smile, and looked left. A dark-haired urchin pulled her pounding Walkman off one ear and didn't raise her head from the pillow. "You may be older, but I'm here longer." The girl jerked her thumb skyward. "You get the upper."

She drifted towards the bunks like a zombie. Halfway there she stopped, and just exhaled for a minute. The urchin's music clicked off. She sat up on her elbows and met her new roomie's eyes with two of deep soulful brown.

"Faith," the girl said.

With a glance at PerkyTown, she mustered a word. "Anne."

Faith blinked. "So did you kill 'B. Summers' and steal her box?"

She laughed softly. "Yeah. Something like that."

The dark-haired girl smiled. "You still get the upper."

* * *

Annie and Faith came into the room laughing and, as usual, the Perky Twins took the opportunity to leave. The others never noticed.

"Did you see his face?" Faith said. "I thought he was gonna dump a load right there in the cafeteria."

"It was priceless," Annie replied, taking off her heavy coat and shaking the snow towards the right side of the room. "I don't think he figured a freshman would tell him off like that."

The brunette watched her with sparkling eyes. "Thanks for the heads up."

"Duh," Annie scoffed, "like you'd date a drummer." She tossed the coat at the wall-mounted rack and it hooked with practiced precision. The blonde turned towards the bunks and stopped. "What's that?" she asked.

Faith didn't answer. When Annie glanced back, the younger girl was chewing her lip, her cheeks slightly flushed, though she'd have claimed it was from the chill outside if asked.

Annie reached up onto her bunk and took a long, flat box from her pillow. It was brown leather, with little brass hinges, tied with white satin ribbon.

"Where'd you get the bow?" Annie asked teasingly.

"Just open it," Faith answered. She'd taken to chewing her thumbnail.

The older girl slipped off the trimming and, leaning back against the bed frame, levered open the box with her thumbs. Looking inside, her breath caught.

"This is a thing of beauty, Faith…" she said, then lifted the intricately carved, brightly polished knife out of its case, turning it back and forth reverently. "Where did you get this?"

"Lifted it from Gun & Sport."

"Faith!" Annie sounded aghast.

"Kidding!" Faith smiled. "I bought it at a pawn shop."

The blonde met her eyes. "It must have cost you."

The younger girl turned shy again. "It was worth it. Happy birthday."

Annie's voice was quiet. "_Thank_ you."

"So, we goin' out?"

"We just got in," Annie replied with mock annoyance.

Faith shrugged, shifting on her feet. "Celebration night… feel like dancing."

Annie reached out a hand and took one of Faith's. Her voice was a caress. "In a little while," she said.

* * *

Sunnyhell, the thought went through her head. The pounding bass from a passing car beat at her. Annie really needed a smoke.

* * *

Too much dancing, too much music, waaay too much espresso, and somehow the two of them found themselves out in the dark end of make-out alley behind Paradise with a couple of guys old enough to know better.

_She_ should have known better. She'd had two full years of training… and five years of trying to forget it.

But more than that, Annie was a fifteen-year-old foster kid who had gotten very used to taking care of herself. She should have known better.

Yet she was too focused on the guy in front of her, the good looking, almost hypnotically charming guy with wrong-side-of-the-tracks hair, casual Army surplus duds, and as she was learning, a great set of lips. His kisses gave her butterflies.

She could hear Faith and her boytoy nearby. Other than that they were alone. Which was odd… considering she'd seen her guy's buds trail them out. What, were they keeping watch?

Annie shivered against the chill. At least it wasn't snowing, but she could see her breath, misting around them when she had a chance to come up for air.

The butterflies kicked her in the gut again, looking at him. Awfully strong and pesky for butterflies. Had his eyes had that feverish yellow tint to them before?

She looked at Faith, whispering closely with her companion. Her own held her very tightly in his hands. Too tightly… it hurt a little. Annie pulled her coat closer and wondered why her guy wasn't wearing one.

And why his buddy wasn't either.

And where their friends were.

And why she and Faith were alone in an alley. With two guys who's breath didn't mist in the air.

With two vampires.

Annie bucked backwards out of the creature's grip. It morphed instantly into game face, just like in all those nightmares she refused to acknowledge or remember. She wasn't ready. She wasn't a Slayer. They were both gonna die.

For a moment that didn't seem so bad. For a long time she'd wanted that. Just to have the misery ended.

But this wasn't then. Crappy as things were in general, she'd been sharing the load, the loneliness and peer pressure and that big hole in her life. With Faith. Who was innocent… who loved her… and who was scared to death right now.

Annie looked about frantically. She knew how to do this. She'd had two full years of training… and five years of trying to forget it. She needed something wood, and all she saw were metal dumpster, paper garbage, glass bottles, piles of snow…

"B!" Faith cried, completely overmatched and struggling.

Annie pulled out her new knife. It wouldn't kill her guy, but he sure howled when she stuck it four inches deep in his thigh. He buckled, and Annie gave him a roundhouse punch to the face, knocking him back. Her hand stung briefly, but she ignored it.

She looked around again. To the side of the dumpster she spotted a heavy wooden crate. If she could just get Faith's vampire over there and make him fall on it… but Faith would be dead before that happened. She sprinted over to it.

Behind her Annie heard her boy laugh. "Hey, smart girl. But you can't run a wooden _box_ through my chest. Pete, she thinks she's a Slayer."

Pete laughed, holding Faith at arm's length, her body quivering in her terror.

The petite blonde choked back her tears. She looked at the solidly built crate. It was too heavy to pick up and try to smash. Her vampire moving in for the kill, she closed her eyes, and swung her fist at the box with everything she had.

It practically disintegrated.

Her eyes wide, Annie dove for the pieces and, with her beast a foot away she spun and plunged. It vanished into pieces smaller than the box.

Without a breath of hesitation she sprang to her feet, scooping up the knife that had fallen to the snow. Pete the Undead had had enough of his pretty prey's struggles and lowered his lips to her neck. He never reached it.

Faith, suddenly released, stumbled back-first to the wall. Her breath came in gasps. "Annie… what… the hell… were they? What… the hell… did you do… to them?"

"No time," she said, grabbing Faith's hand and dragging her down the alley further where a fence blocked them in. There was a small gap in the chain links. Behind her she could hear the drumming of footsteps.

"We're trapped!" Faith sobbed. Annie shook her head, then grabbed the wire around the hole with both hands and pulled. The gap tore open like tissue paper.

"Go!" she yelled, then had to push Faith towards the opening. As the brunette climbed through the first of the vampires' two buddies arrived. Annie stood still and held out the stake. The bloodsucker tried to backpedal but couldn't find purchase on the slippery surface. Annie closed her eyes against the cloud of dust.

Faith was through, and Annie followed. The other creature was right behind. The blonde stopped short and spun back into a kick into the chain link, knocking the vampire off a ways. It came right back. Annie began to move away as it started through the hole again. But it was a feint, and as the beast's head emerged, she stepped back and took hold of the wire and twisted, entangling her opponent.

Faith had stopped twenty feet away, sensing Annie's absence, and just stared. The older, smaller girl pulled out her birthday gift once more and, as easily as butter, sliced through the thing's neck. It crumbled.

Annie listened, but no more were approaching. The blonde collapsed to the hard-packed snow, a fine coat of gray sprinkling its white surface. She couldn't feel a thing, and yet she felt everything. Fire coursed through her body and blood. She'd never felt so strong.

Her best friend stepped to her cautiously, then sank to the ground beside her. Faith threw her arms about the other girl and clung for dear life.

But Annie could barely feel it. The girl's grip was as a child's to her. Annie just stared into space. "Oh my God…" she said. "I've been Called."

* * *

"Mein Jägerin ist tot."

Willow heard the voice as from far away. Her jaw ached and was oddly cold. Her hands ached. She cracked open her eyes and the light made her head ache. She winced.

The dark-haired girl looked up from the book in her lap. She sat at Ripper's desk and all about her, on the bed, on the floor, and piled high on the oak surface, were the Watcher Diaries. "I think that's German," she said.

"Hmm?" Willow mumbled, assessing her uncomfortable position of being tied, hands behind her, to a chair, her legs lashed as well.

Dark eyes turned her way. Deep, sad eyes. "Oh, you're awake." She stood.

"Don't hit me again," the Wiccan whimpered.

"Not gonna." She set the book down and moved closer, then, sitting on the edge of the bed, reached behind herself and produced an icepack, which she held to Willow's jaw.

Well that explained the cold.

"I'm sorry about the punch," the girl said. "Trying to turn over a new leaf and all, find my new calling. But, you know, old habits, not much for trusting, that sort of thing."

"I see," Willow said. She didn't. "What are you doing?"

"Studying." She pulled the icepack off. "Feel better?"

"A little."

"I'd let a hand free for you to hold it, but you might cast something on me. Turn me into a frog or something."

"How do you know I can't do that with just my voice?"

The girl looked at her suspiciously

Willow hurried to amend herself. "I can't, though."

"Here," she said, "tilt your head." She put the icepack between Willow's shoulder and jaw. Then she went back to the desk.

"If you're trying to find a way to get her out, you won't find it in those," the redhead said.

The girl frowned. "There is no way out. She's stuck."

"That's what I heard. I'd like to keep it that way."

The brunette looked down at the book she'd picked back up. "Or she's already out. That's why I'm one, I think."

Willow's eyes went wide. "Drusilla's out?"

"Huh?"

"If you're one, why didn't you just kill me, anyway?"

"I don't kill people," her voice was testy, dangerous.

"I thought that's what you guys do," Willow answered.

"You heard wrong. And who's Drusilla?"

"What?"

"What?"

"Aren't you a vampire?"

"No!"

"Oh."

"Who's Drusilla?"

"A vampire."

"Gotcha. Can you read this?" she brought the book over.

"Mein Jägerin ist tot," the redhead read aloud.

"I think it's German."

Willow looked up at the girl; the icepack fell to the floor. "It says 'My Slayer is dead'."

She sat down on the bed again. "Oh," she said, and took a deep breath. Her eyes scanned the page. "Greta Braiden. Achtzehn."

Willow looked at the book in the brunette's lap. "Eighteen."

The girl shook her head slowly. "She was eighteen." The soulful eyes met Willow's again. "_I'm_ eighteen."

The witch looked at her more closely. "You're Faith."

She looked down again. "I'm Faith."

"You're a Slayer."

"So I've been told."

Willow puzzled. "What are you looking for?"

"Information… about me, who I am. What a Slayer is."

"You don't know?"

"I know some. Not much."

"I can tell you some. I knew a Slayer once."

Faith's brow furrowed. "You did?"

"Her name was Kendra. She was my best friend." She swallowed the lump in her throat. "Rip… Rupert, my — boss — was her Watcher."

"Her what?"

"Her Watcher. You don't know about Watchers?"

She looked down. "I've been protected from a lot, I guess."

Willow considered the girl in front of her. She took a deep breath. "Try that volume over there."

The brunette puzzled. "Which?"

"I'd point, but, you know," she shrugged, "no hands."

"Oh," the girl answered, but made no move to release her.

Willow sighed. "That one on the right side of the desk, with the gold leaf edge."

Faith picked up the tome and opened it to the first page. "September 4, 1996," she read. Then she closed her eyes.

"What's wrong?"

The Slayer looked at her. "Nothing. I…" she nodded at the book, "I just remember when this was, that's all."

* * *

"How many times are we gonna have this conversation?" Annie yelled.

"Apparently every time you go on patrol," Faith returned.

The Slayer turned back around and continued up the sidewalk away from her friend, away from the home. "It's not safe for you."

"It's not safe for you either, but you do it."

"I'm Chosen for it. I'm _built_ for it."

Faith jogged to keep up, but Annie was making it very hard. "It's the same conversation because you do the same thing every time: we decide to go out, you take an hour beforehand to track down and kill any beasties you're afraid might get me."

"First I patrol, _then_ we party," she said it like a mantra.

The brunette grabbed the Slayer by the shoulder to stop her momentarily. "What about the ones who might get _you_? You leave me home waiting for you to come back. What if you die out here? What if I never see you again except to identify the body?"

There was a catch in Annie's voice. "What, you think it would be easier for me to identify yours?" She turned away again. "I'm the one with super powers, I'm the one who patrols."

"And I'm the one who follows."

Annie whirled and planted a palm in the middle of Faith's chest. It almost knocked the breath from the younger woman. "Stop, turn around, and go back. Right. Now."

Faith just looked at Annie, her eyes starting to mist over after a moment. She hung her head. "Okay." She turned and started back, slowly, then raising a hand to her mouth and accelerating to a trot. She entered the home without looking back.

Annie sighed deeply, then turned back around and headed out again.

Why was this so hard for Faith? She'd been utterly, white-knuckle terrified that first time she'd seen a vampire. Annie couldn't count how many nights she'd climbed down from her bunk and under Faith's covers to soothe a horrible nightmare.

How could she make herself come out here and fight to go along every time? And she hadn't seen a tenth of the horrors Annie had.

For example, the Slayer thought, taking off at a dead run, watching four vampires drag two teenage runaways into an alley behind a boarded-up butcher shop.

The stench hit her as soon as she entered the passage. The smell of old animal blood masked that of fresh human kill for them, she figured. With luck it would mask her scent as well. She snuck along, back to a rotting wooden fence opposite the shop wall, listening intently. Peering around the corner to the space behind the building, a dim yellow safety bulb illuminated the quartet of demons standing around the two quivering youths, two of the horrors with their backs to her.

"I love them fresh, don't you Zeke?" one creature said to another, and they all laughed. What is it about vamps that make them always taunt before the meal? At the moment, she was grateful; it gave her the element of surprise. Annie flexed her fingers around her stake.

"Weren't you ever told not to play with your food?" the Slayer said, stepping up behind the two closest, and plunged her weapon through one vampire's back. She spun and kicked the other in the back of the head, careering it towards a mate. "It's just rude."

The fourth vampire, still standing, stalked forward. "So is interrupting someone else's meal," he said, and knocked the stake out of her hand.

She stepped to her left and kicked down on his leg, snapping his knee in an entirely incorrect direction. He howled in pain.

"Run," she barked at the two shocked teens as she passed, scooping up her weapon and heading for the two creatures lying in a heap. Annie took out the one on top, but the other, anticipating, kicked up through the dust cloud and caught her full in the chest, launching her backwards into the air. She hit the back door of the butcher shop full on, knocking it open and landing her inside.

Annie gasped for her lost breath, but within the store the odor was so strong it hit her almost physically. The impact of her fall left her disoriented, and the smell made her nauseous. Then, in the dimness, she discerned the reason for its intensity: bodies, stacked everywhere. Not all dead. And not all unattended. At least half a dozen vampires began to get up and move her way. She struggled to get up, but was grabbed fast by the nearest of the undead, held in a wrestler's Full Nelson.

In the doorway, the beast who'd kicked her, and the broken-legged one she'd kicked, were side by side. The injured one, leaning on the doorjamb, gazed at her with lazy yellow eyes. "Feisty is even better than just fresh. Save her for me."

There was a loud _crack_, and the injured vampire crumpled to the floor, the back of his head bloody and wet. Through the doorway, Annie saw Faith with holding a two-by-four, ripped from the rotting fence.

"I think feisty is a little more than you can handle," the brunette said.

As the other vamp in the door turned to face the new threat, Annie lifted her arms straight up and dropped out of the startled creature's hold. She elbowed him in the crotch, then sprang towards the door, knocking the beast going after Faith out of the way. She grabbed Faith's hand and pulled.

"Let's go!"

"With ya on that!"

Half a dozen vampires were on their tail by the time the two came out of the alley. Annie pulled Faith left and up the car-lined avenue. They'd made a hundred yards when the Slayer heard an engine fire up and tires squeal.

Annie looked up the road, but it was a long block, with no visible exits. They kept running.

Behind them, the driver blasted over a parked motorcycle and onto the sidewalk, gunning the engine to flat out.

Eyes very wide, Faith yanked Annie's arm as the steel missile blazed towards them, pulling her over a parked car's hood and into the street. Then she held her friend back against it as oncoming traffic nearly ran them down.

The vampires knocked over a newspaper dispenser pulling back onto the avenue and screeching in a one eighty to face the two girls again.

Breathing heavily, they reversed their path and ran back towards the butcher shop once more, barely avoiding a swiping pass from the vamps by diving over hood again.

"Screw this," Annie said and, standing, elbowed in the window of a parked Taurus. She scrambled to the driver's seat and stuck her hands under the dash as Faith slid in, buckled up frantically, and re-closed the door. By the time the vamps had pulled another U-turn, the engine was going. The Slayer pulled the car out almost right in front of their pursuers, making the latter swerve to avoid them, and then barreled up the road as fast as the car would move.

Unfortunately, the demons were driving a 70's muscle machine, and had little trouble gaining on the family sedan. The direction they'd been pointed took them out of town, and as they raced almost side by side, heading further and further from safety and lights, the vampire driver began a torturous campaign of trying to drive them off the road.

Annie fought to keep on the pavement, but the road began to twist and turn and it took all her Slayer strength to keep out of the ditch that appeared just beyond the shoulder. The vamp's car slammed into them, and Annie turned the wheel left and pushed them back and into the opposite lane.

The other car broke away just in time for an oncoming one to slip between them by a breath. Annie jerked right again.

Once more the other vehicle swept their way, but Annie slowed down so they'd miss. But her reactions weren't fast enough, and the vamps just clipped the front of the Taurus, which turned abruptly sideways in a scream of rubber, and another scream as Faith grabbed the windowsill in terror and nearly lost a finger on the broken glass.

The blonde managed to right the car and keep moving, but had to swerve again as the car of undead slammed on its brakes right in their path. Annie was by in a flash, but now the vampires were in pursuit again.

Glancing over to see Faith tearing off a strip of T-shirt to wrap her wound, Annie realized why the ditch had materialized: just beyond it was an isolated train track. She got an idea as she looked up the road and spotted a low trellis over a dark waterway, and the lonely Cyclops eye of an oncoming iron beast.

The road was heading into a bend and then a parallel jaunt along a narrow river, while the tracks continued straight over the water. Judging carefully where the road turned off and the train's bridge began, Annie stared into the rear view and set her timing. With a hundred yards to go before the curve she swept into the oncoming lane.

With fifty she jammed the brakes and slowed until she was beside the vamps.

With twenty she told Faith to hold on, and slammed sideways into their car.

The vampires had nowhere to go. To their right was about to be a river, to their left, the Taurus. Unable to force the girls away in time, they slid off onto the shoulder, over the short ditch and onto the tracks, where their car's wheels got tangled. Halfway over the river, they hit the train head on in a blast of sparks and flame.

But momentum was the girls' enemy as well. As she tried to pull back into the curve Annie found the right-side tires wouldn't grip the gravel shoulder and the Taurus bounced off the road and right over the embankment, hitting the river nose first.

With the broken window, the car filled up quickly. Faith's arms ached from steeling for the impact, but her seat belt had held her fast. She clawed at the latch by her hip, trying not to panic as the water reached her waist. If she didn't release herself, the car would hit bottom and she'd never make it to the surface alive. She took a deep breath. Her hands kept slipping, but finally, as the river closed over her head, she got the belt loose.

Then she turned in the murky water, and saw that Annie wasn't moving.

The Slayer hadn't used her belt, and it might not have mattered if she did. Annie's head had hit the steering wheel with the first impact, and she was out cold. Faith pulled at her in the heavy water, but she didn't move. The fourteen-year-old used her bandaged hand to cover the ragged edges of glass as she slipped through the window and out of the car, then turned and reached back in, bracing herself on the sinking car to lift Annie through the opening. Her heart pounding, her lungs bursting, Faith got her shoulder under Annie's arm and kicked and kicked and kicked until she made the surface.

They were ten feet from shore, but Annie still hadn't moved by the time Faith reached it. The younger girl laid her friend out on her back on the beach, the orange light of the flaming car illuminating the night.

Annie's eyes were still closed. She wasn't breathing.

She had no pulse.

Faith opened her friend's mouth, pinched her nose and, placing their lips together, blew.

She placed her palms together just so over Annie's breast, and pressed down.

And again.

And again.

Five times, then blow. Five times, then blow.

Annie still didn't move.

Tears joined the river's water on Faith's cheeks. "Don't go baby," she whispered. "Come back."

Five times, then blow.

"You can do it."

Five times, then blow.

Annie still didn't move.

Faith sat back on her heels. She couldn't lift her arms. Annie's shirt was crimson from the blood on Faith's seeping bandage. "God no… God no… don't do this to me, B, don't you _do_ this to me!"

Her heart breaking in a million pieces, she whispered to the small, unmoving body, "Don't leave me here by myself."

Then she slammed her fist down on the Slayer's chest.

Five times, then blow.

Annie went suddenly stiff, then coughed up a mouthful of water. She gasped for air loudly, eyes wide, her hands clawing the wet mud of the bank. Faith grabbed her shoulders to steady her, and their eyes locked, and the Slayer, breathing shallow, relaxed.

Her eyes looked about as her mind caught up with her. She heard the last squeal of the train as it finally stopped, saw the blazing wreck of the car slide off and into the river. In the last of the flickering orange light, she looked into Faith's liquid eyes.

"Okay…" Annie said with a weak smile, "you can come along on patrol with me."

Faith just held her and wept.

-


	11. The Here and Now

"Alright Corporal, thanks for the heads up. I'll change around the duty roster to give you the break ASAP."

"I appreciate that, sir."

The Lieutenant smiled. "Well, we have to look out for one another around here."

The soldier nodded. "I certainly understand that, sir."

His commanding officer sat down on the edge of his desk and regarded the young man carefully. "Off the record, Mr. Harris, are you sure the team can't help you with this Sub-T situation?"

"Well," Xander replied, "I can't say that for sure, sir. I'd rather not get you and the others involved if I don't have to. It's sort of a personal matter this time out."

"We've been on enough missions to trust one another, haven't we Corporal?"

"Oh, absolutely, sir. I'd trust you — and everyone on the team — with my life. But I'm just thinking of our cover. If this one gets hairy—"

"If it gets hairy, Corporal, you give us a call. Let me worry about our cover." The officer looked at the pile of paperwork stacked on his desk. "I've gotten quite skilled at making things up for the benefit of Uncle Sam."

Xander smiled slightly. "Yes sir. If we need the assist, I've got you on speed-dial."

The Lieutenant looked at the clock, going on midnight. "Now get back home to that pretty red-head of yours."

"Absolutely, sir," the soldier said, grinning and, with a final salute, departed the office.

Lieutenant Riley Finn sighed and sat down behind his desk again, looking at the stack of reports sadly. "Sometime I feel like Carl Kolchek, I swear."

* * *

"Thank you," Willow said, letting the straw drop from her lips.

"Hmm?" Faith mumbled, raising her head from the book in her lap. "Oh, sure," she then answered, seeing the Wiccan was finished with the soda, and stood from the bed, setting the empty glass on the desk before sitting back in the desk chair. "So you guys had your worst nightmares come to life, huh?"

"Oh, yeah," Willow shuddered, remembering. "Well, the worst up to that time, anyway. I've dreamt of worse things than public performance anxiety since then."

"Still, pretty freaky."

"Tell me about it. But that tends to be the daily routine around Sunnydale."

"Because this place is a…" the brunette searched around the desk for another book, then picked it up and flipped to the beginning, "a _Boca Del Infierno_?"

Willow nodded.

"I could tell the creep factor was pretty high, but…" she shook her head. Faith closed the book, setting it on the desk again. She rest her hand on its cover. "This Rupert guy…"

"Yes?"

"He seems pretty sincere. Like he really cared about your friend Kendra."

She swallowed. "More than you can imagine."

Faith looked at her lap. "But he still sent her out every night, into all that danger."

Willow flushed until her cheeks matched her hair. "You think it was easy for him?"

The girl met her eyes. "Was it?"

"It was _awful_ for him. I know you can't know this, because you don't know him, but he'd have done anything to protect her from it."

I know the type, Faith thought.

"When she…" Willow struggled to find her voice. "When she was gone, you can't understand how that destroyed him."

Faith moved over to the bed again. She put her hand on Willow's knee gently. "I'm sorry, I just had to know. I had to hear you say it." She looked off, her eyes distant. "Annie… It's just that Annie says you can't trust the Council."

"Well, I wouldn't exactly stick up for the Council, but Rupert, that's different."

"I'm getting that." She looked back at the witch. "What about this other guy?"

"Which guy?"

"The guy who was here earlier. The English guy?" Faith shrugged at Willow's look. "Sorry, eavesdropping, another bad habit."

"Wesley. What about him?"

"Annie says he's also from this Council thingy."

"The Watcher's Council."

"Whatever. Annie said she saw him in Boston."

Willow frowned. "Annie is the other girl you're traveling with?"

"Yeah."

"How does she know about the Council?"

Faith shrugged. "Well, she's been one longer than I have. She hasn't told me a whole lot, though."

"Wait," Willow said, "you're telling me that your friend Annie is _also_ a Slayer?"

The brunette furrowed her brow. "Yeah. Weird, I know. Very freaky coincidence. But true."

"Also," the Wiccan cocked her head, "impossible."

"Not the best time to start calling me a liar."

Willow shook her head. "I didn't say that. I just don't know how it could be true."

"I don't understand."

"'Into every generation a Slayer is born,'" Willow quoted. "'One girl in all the world, a Chosen One, one born with the strength and skill to hunt the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness.' Note the '_one_ girl' part."

"Huh," Faith said.

"When one dies, the next one is called. So there's only ever one."

The Slayer puzzled for just a moment. "But Annie did die," she said. She turned and grabbed the first volume of Rupert's diaries, and held out the opening page to the Wicca. "Right then."

Willow looked quite disturbed. "So you brought your friend back… as a zombie?"

Faith grew wide-eyed. "No, with CPR. And may I say, 'ewww'."

The redhead shrugged. "Sorry, lived on the Hellmouth too long."

"I'm thinking so." Then her brow furrowed, and she turned back to look at the piles of books.

Willow was ahead of her. "It's the one over to the left," she said quietly, "by the picture frame."

Faith picked up the book with great reluctance.

Willow's voice was barely audible. "Turn to June third."

* * *

Annie'd had a headache all day. Well, not so much a headache, actually, but more an uneasy, check-all-the-corners and sharpen your stake feeling, which after a while led right into a supernatural migraine.

Faith, on the other hand, was all perk and sunshine, which led to Annie's taunting her that she was sleeping on the wrong side of the room and, but for the dark hair, could be mistaken for Blonde C. Faith ignored her. Annie thought it was probably just an 'end of school year' thing.

In any case, the younger girl was so itching to go out that Annie had finally relented, and they ended up in an unfamiliar part of town at a blues joint that wasn't all that good anyway in her opinion, but which Faith seemed to enjoy. The Slayer indulged her until the rowdiest group of college frat boys there got drunk enough so that hitting on young high school girls no longer seemed inappropriate to them, and then pulled her reluctant friend out the door.

"Annie, don't you think you're being a little downer?" Faith complained.

"Faith, don't you think you're being a little jailbait?" Annie returned, and her friend laughed.

The avenue leading towards the T-station was busy with more college-age partiers, stocked by a fair number of college parties in the apartment buildings that lined it. Faith kept dancing to the blared music as they walked. A small group of guys behind them whistled appreciatively.

"Looks like someone is ready to party," one of them, a neatly dressed but buff, curly-haired blond who probably went by the name of Brad, called.

"You know it," Faith responded, shaking her hips and walking backwards, facing the boys.

"We're heading in, just around the corner there," another said, this one with the look of a rugby player, Annie thought.

"S'okay," the Slayer responded, "we're actually on our way home."

"But the night is young!" 'Brad' complained.

"And so are we," Annie sniped back.

Faith tugged at the older girl's sleeve. "C'mon, B, just a few minutes wouldn't hurt."

"Faith, I've got a headache already," Annie shook her head. "I don't need more loud music."

The brunette took the blonde's hand in both of hers and rubbed her thumbs along the back of it. "I can give you a good backrub later, take that tension right away."

"Hey I'd pay to see that," the rugby player, who might actually have been more a lacrosse type if Annie cared about such things, snickered to his buddies.

Annie glowered at the guys.

"Just a couple of songs," Faith begged.

The Slayer was unable to resist that tone in her companion's voice. Faith restrained from squealing at her consent, but barely. Annie had to smile.

The house the guys led them to was set back slightly from the side street they'd turned onto, a fancy brick with great columns along the front. Inside the music was blaring and the dancing was very close. As the two wandered through an atrium decorated with small but ornate marble statues of nudes and into a living area packed with bodies wearing little more, they found drinks shoved in their hands from impossible to identify sources.

"Fancy place," Faith shouted in Annie's ear.

The blonde took the tiniest sip of her drink, while ogling two chiseled hardbodies in a grind sandwich with an auburn bikini model about three feet away. "You're looking at the _place_?"

She saw the rugby guy and the blond heading out the back of the living room, each in turn giving a strange salute and handshake to a man standing by a door before heading through it. Fraternities, she thought to herself.

There was a motion to the crowd here, jammed as it was, and Annie found herself and Faith being forced towards room's center.

"Are we dancing?" her companion asked.

She grabbed Faith's elbow to keep them together against the push. "We have any choice?" she yelled over the din.

The music and heat engulfed them. They mostly danced with one another, but the proximity and movement of the throng paired them up randomly song to song with others. After maybe thirty minutes her friend slid back close to her again.

"Hey, I think that redhead just felt me up," Faith laughed.

"Did you get her number?" Annie laughed back. "She was kinda cute!"

"Man I'm burning up!" She lifted a plastic cup, not the one from before, to her mouth.

Annie frowned. "Hey, go easy on that stuff. Whatever they're serving it's pretty strong. And I only sipped it."

"Lightweight!" Faith winked. "I do think I need some water, though. Did we see a kitchen?"

The older girl shrugged.

"I'll find one!" the brunette said, and slipped back away into the party again.

"Faith, wait!" Annie called, but it was too late. The lights seemed very bright to her, and that mystic migraine hit her again. She made her way to the edge of the dancing and saw a glass someone had set down. Her own had been abandoned long ago. She picked up the cup and held it near her nose, but could smell nothing unusual. Annie dipped a pinkie in it and dabbed it on her tongue. She looked back around the dance floor, at the semi-glassy look of most of the partiers. There was something stronger than alcohol in the punch.

She pushed through the dancers with difficulty, having to be rude and resort to Slayer strength a couple of times. The farther back she went, the darker the room became, and spotting Faith's dark hair became an increasingly difficult task. Annie made a right near the door in the room's rear and kept searching. She saw someone else exchange handshakes with the sentry guy, and could have sworn she heard them talking about taquitos.

She spotted the curly-haired blond guy as she passed into another, smaller living space, not quite as crowded. She pushed up to him. He looked flushed, and not from the room's warmth. Suddenly, it all made sense.

How do I get into these things? Annie wondered, but knew even as she asked. She was the Slayer. It wasn't just that she was trained to see the darkness, that she recognized it. Something in the fabric of reality, the balance of light and night, drew her to this. She was fated. She was Chosen.

No, screw that, the Watchers put that in her head. Right now she just needed to save Faith and get the hell out of here.

"Hey, have you seen my friend?" Annie asked 'Brad'. "The one I came in with?"

The guy puzzled before he recognized her. "Oh, hey, yeah… dark-headed girl, kinda gothy? I think she's in the back."

"The back?" she swallowed hard.

He placed a hand on her shoulder and turned her around. He leaned in close to her ear. "Through that door," he said, his breath slightly acrid and with a familiar hint of copper. His hand slid down her back in a way she didn't really feel like putting up with, but she steeled her resolve. "I can take you."

She nodded briefly, thinking exactly the same thing to herself, and let him lead her. She hoped he couldn't feel the stake in the back of her belt.

The sentry's vaguely yellowish eyes roamed Annie appraisingly as the frat boy brought her closer. Her senses were on full alert as they neared the entranceway. She should _not_ have let Faith talk her into this. Annie definitely had to learn how to resist that girl.

'Brad' attempted to pass the sentry with a nod, but apparently even return visitors didn't get off lightly and they found a stiff arm blocking their way. Annie's guide sighed. "I live for Kakistos," he stated, and the arm fell.

The door led to a tiny room, almost a closet really, and another door straight ahead. Like an airlock, Annie thought. Or more likely a soundlock.

Past the second door the lights were much dimmer, and the crush of bodies gone. There were lots of couches and big pillows in dark corners. They passed from one room to another and another in a labyrinthine fashion. Annie spotted couples here and there in the gloom, but they weren't dancing. At least not vertically.

Her Slayers' eyes hadn't seen Faith yet. Her heart was pounding in her chest. She knew without looking that her guide had gone into game face, but she dared not acknowledge it until she had a sense of the floorplan in her head. Tough enough to find Faith in this maze full of vampires, but to find their way out was gonna be a nightmare worse than this was already becoming.

Then they came to a stairway, leading down. Terrific.

A couple of dingy storerooms, stocked with casks. Annie had the sickening feeling she might know the vintage in them. Then, at last they emerged into a long chamber, walls of stone, concave sconces in them holding burning torches that shed flickering light dimly upon the room. And between the torches were set iron rings, through which looped long chains that ended in shackles about the wrists of glassy-eyed partiers, a dozen or more around the walls. A few looked bruised, a few cried softly.

One, a familiar brunette, looked distinctly pissed off and kept testing the chains and loop, despite the burly vampire standing right in front of her.

'Brad' put his mouth to Annie's ear. "I think that's your friend there, isn't it?" he chuckled.

"That would be the one." She turned and looked at him, not even acknowledging the wrinklies in his forehead. "I'm thinking you don't want us to leave the party just yet, huh?"

The vampire narrowed his eyes. "Not just yet, no." He looked to a cluster of his fellow undead chatting near the right end of the room. "Hey Deimos," he called to the rugby guy, "Got another for the master's feast." The other vampire drifted over. "Might as well put her with her little friend there."

Annie put on a plastic grin. "Oh, that's very kind of you." She walked over to Faith, turned back to face the beast guarding her friend, and held out her wrists together. The vampire looked at her curiously, then shot a glance back at Deimos, who shrugged, then picked up a set of shackles and chain from the corner and joined them. The burly vamp pulled out a set of keys.

Without hesitation, Faith grabbed the chains just above her shackles and lifted herself into the air, then wrapped her legs around Deimos' throat and jerked him back. Annie whipped out her stake and skewered the burly vamp, then caught the keys as they dropped from his crumbling fingers. Faith slammed Deimos' head into the stone wall and pulled him back around right onto the point of Annie's stake. Annie flicked the keys to her and reached down to pick up the chain Deimos had dropped. She swung it threateningly as Faith unlocked herself behind the Slayer.

"Don't you guys know it's summer?" Annie said to the stunned vampires. "You're supposed to have your parties outside in the sun, not in dingy stone dungeons."

One beast darted forward from the cluster as Faith jumped to unlock more prisoners behind her. The Slayer slung the chain out like a whip and wrapped it about his knees, then dragged him to her on his back. She knelt, staked him, and rose in one smooth motion.

"And c'mon, torches?" Annie said. "Isn't that a little gothic even for you guys?"

A gravelly voice came from a shadowed doorway just beyond the group of demons. "Makes me feel at home," it said, and as they separated to let the new one through, Annie cringed as her Slayer sense went right off the scale. The beast was much uglier than any vampire she'd ever seen. It was balding, but sported a goatee, which Annie thought was appropriate given that its hands and feet were both cloven like a goat. It was powerfully built and its eyes went right through her. The other vampires bowed their heads.

"Kakistos," they intoned.

The Slayer screwed up courage she didn't feel into her voice. "At home, huh? Well you can stay then, but we were just leaving."

"Not before the feast, you're not," the beast countered.

"We're really not hungry, but thanks." She whipped the chain out again and the shackle caught Kakistos right in the face. He flinched as a sharp edge sliced open the skin of his forehead and he cried out in pain, but then his cloven hand snatched the chain before Annie could pull it back and yanked it out of her grip.

Kakistos growled at her, his face bloody, then he stretched the chain between his hands and snapped it like a limp noodle.

The Slayer looked over her shoulder where Faith had unlatched only half the partiers.

"We're leaving, Faith. Right now."

"But Annie! The others!" Faith almost begged.

"We go or we die," Annie barked to her.

Kakistos smiled. "I think you stay _and_ you die."

He grabbed two of his minions and tossed them forward at her, thinking to catch her off guard. Instead Annie slipped between the vampires and the door and laid into both with her fists, their flailing preventing any of the other creatures from reaching the doorway or Faith and the others escaping through it.

With a frustrated look at the still chained victims, Faith called to her companion from the doorway. "Let's go!"

Annie gave one vampire a knockdown blow and a spin kick to the other that sent him back into the other cluster, pushing them backwards, then headed for the door.

In the second storeroom she kicked the nearest cask a couple of times and it sprang a dark crimson leak. She pushed Faith towards the stairway as the vampires followed, the first one slipping on the spilt blood and the second tumbling over him.

Unfortunately the rooms at the top of the stairs were as confusing as she'd feared, especially with the pile of frightened partiers Faith had freed. More vampires upstairs had come to check on the ruckus, and as Annie turned in the stairwell to kick a vampire on her tail back down the way he'd come, she heard Faith cry out as another up top grabbed her.

The Slayer emerged from the basement and quickly staked the vampire who greeted her. She looked left and right, but couldn't see far because of the multitude of twisting hallways and side rooms. The vampires coming up from below made the decision for her, forcing Annie towards what she thought was the back of the house.

She took to guerilla warfare, hiding around corners and striking out stake first as the vampires chased her, thinning their numbers. But she got more and more panicked as she poked into the rooms she came to and still had seen no sign of Faith.

And she was running out of hallway. The passage ended in a door straight ahead and one to the right. Annie took the one on the side, opening to a dark room, and closed it behind her, waiting by the door. She could hear footsteps approach. Hand on the knob and hearing pitched to the limit, she waited until the footsteps stopped right outside, then pulled open the door as her stalker would be reaching for the knob.

Her stake went into Kakistos' chest about an inch and stopped dead. She pulled the stake back out. The creature smiled a toothy, wet smile at her. Then slammed one hoof into her chest and knocked her flying. Annie was certain he'd broken a rib or two.

She didn't have time to think. The Slayer rolled to a stop and sprang at him again, knocking him back out the doorway and up the hall a foot or so. She ducked right and through the last door.

She'd stumbled upon an elegant dining room, stocked with opulent furniture: a dark, ten-foot table with chairs; matching cabinets; serving carts; and more. There was a door to the right and one straight ahead. Windows in the wall across from her told her she'd reached the house's rear. Annie headed right, hoping she might find her way back to Faith.

Halfway there a chair flew over her head and splintered on the door. She ducked and turned, and another followed it. Kakistos had another chair in each hand.

"You'll ruin things for those elegant formals you so like to have," Annie said.

"More into keggers these days," he returned, flinging more furniture. "The food is much livelier."

"Especially when it fights back and kills all the guests," she returned.

Kakistos picked the long, heavy table up and threw it at her effortlessly. The entire room shook with its impact against the wall, as Annie ducked beneath it. She turned towards the doorway at the room's rear and made for it. A large shadow came her way and Annie just made it through the exit as a cedar chest hit the doorframe, fortunately angled so that its two ends hit the walls on either side rather than following her out.

She was in an enclosed back porch, strewn with folding chairs and a metal picnic table, the ceiling braced by high exposed crossbeams. There was no other entrance back to the main house, back to Faith, other than the one she'd come out. And Kakistos stood in that one.

"You know I have a quaint little alligator farm in Missouri," he said. "Maybe I should keep you alive long enough to see it."

"I've always wanted to try fried alligator. Write down the address and I'll visit after I kill you."

"Those jokes are a little more effective if you're actually winning," he said. He sprang at her and she twisted out of his path. He rolled into the wall hard, and the ceiling beams shook. Annie scampered back through the door and into the dining room.

She made left towards the door there again, instead of back into the maze. As her pursuer made it back into the room, she flipped the table out of the way and opened the door.

"Hey, I have a Slayer on my hands," the ancient vampire said, "No wonder this is so much fun."

Beyond the door was a two-level stairwell going up. Annie climbed quickly, her breath becoming labored. As she turned the corner and continued up, Kakistos leapt the entire first flight to the landing just behind her and reached out a hoof, just missing her. She burst through the doorway at the top into a windowed hallway, traversing the back of the house above the dining room.

Annie was halfway down it when the demon caught up with her. She grabbed the hoof on her shoulder and flipped him, judo-style, over onto his back. But he was back on his feet in a flash, grabbing her again before she could escape. She grappled with him back and forth, too close to get her stake in, when he threw her sideways into the wall. Her bones rattled.

He grabbed her again and started to swing her for another slam but she planted her foot and used all her Slayer strength to change their momentum. Kakistos hit a window full on and crashed through it. But his grip on her was firm, and she went along for the ride.

They fell, demon first, through the roof of the back porch, buckling half the beams and scattering shingles, and hit the floor hard enough to separate them. Body aching in every joint, Annie swung out her stake and, again, it only went in an inch, to no effect.

Kakistos grabbed her wrist and twisted, and Annie lost her grip on the wooden spike. Both were on their feet in a moment, facing off again, but the Slayer was rattled head to toe and shaking.

The beast looked down at his chest and grinned. He calmly reached down and plucked the stake out of his chest. "I've faced Slayers before," he said. "I wasn't impressed." He held it out. "I'm still not." The cloven-hooved demon crushed her weapon to splinters. "Little girl, you think you can take me?" His breath in Annie's face was rancid. "You're gonna need a bigger stake."

Annie backed to the outside wall. The vampire's face was bleeding all along where she'd ripped open his forehead and down his cheek. He stepped closer, and she found herself frozen, stock still, with terror.

And then he stood straight, his eyes holding a far away look. And from his chest was protruding the ragged end of a large, heavy beam, from the fallen ceiling. Kakistos crumbled into dust, and the front end of the great wooden pole sank to the ground. The other end was in Faith's hands.

"Was that one big enough for you, Khaki Toast?" the brunette asked the pile of ashes.

It took a moment for what had happened to sink in for Annie. Then, blinking, she sprang to Faith and grabbed her arm. "Now we run. Let's go!"

But Faith didn't move, and she pulled out of Annie's grip quite easily. "No. Actually I'm feeling pretty good." She turned to look back at the still open door, and Kakistos' remaining minions beyond, come to see the fuss. "I'm feeling like I could use a good fight." She dropped the beam, and bent to scoop up another, fist-sized, sharp fragment of wood. She looked at Annie with a half-smile on her face, and something else that made the blonde's stomach drop six inches. "Care to join?"

Faith didn't wait for an answer, just sprinted for the other room. Once again, Annie found herself too terrified to move. She could hear the sounds of scuffle, and the hiss of exploding demon. Finally her feet kicked in where her brain wouldn't, and she went to help, every protective instinct firing to watch Faith's back as the younger girl exacted some serious carnage.

But in her head, all Annie could see was that look on Faith's face. Her heart ached. Somehow fate had found them again, because Annie knew that look from every time she'd glanced in a mirror.

Faith was a Slayer too.

* * *

Less than a week later, Annie remembered, the Brit had shown up in Southy looking for Faith. And she'd just packed up their things, taken Faith's hand, and run. The younger Slayer had been more than happy to; she'd accepted Annie's declaration of danger, and they'd just hopped a train and gone.

Now, of course, Annie knew that Faith hadn't believed her after all. That Faith had just played along with what she thought was Annie's paranoia.

For the fourth time the Slayer pulled out her pack of cigarettes to double check its emptiness. She wondered if her spare was still behind Faith's ear. Trying to banish the thought, she took a deep breath and looked around herself. Residential neighborhood, stoplight at the intersection just ahead. Gas stations perched on opposite corners. Annie's hands roamed her pockets, finally coming up with a wad of bills large enough to buy some more smokes. She stuffed the money away again and pointed herself in the right direction.

Why didn't she tell Faith more about the Watchers before? Maybe she could have satisfied some of her curiosity. Maybe Faith wouldn't be so amped about seeking them out. Maybe… maybe Annie could turn her against every instinct the Chosen One has about saving the world?

She shook her head to shed those thoughts. She didn't have the instincts anymore, she told herself forcefully. Not since… not for a long while.

And what _about_ this Watcher? Or, these Watchers, plural, she reminded herself. The one she'd seen in Boston was about the right speed, but Ripper? He was nothing like the Watchers she remembered, Merrick, or that Travers guy. (Her body betrayed her, thinking about Ripper… about his touch… shut _up_, B, she said to herself.) What was his deal? That he was buddies with a vampire, and whatever the other guy, the shorter one, was, just stumped her.

What the hell was Faith getting herself into?

Annie went to cross the street, angling for the nearer gas station and Quickie Mart, and paused at the sound of an approaching engine. Then she ducked back in the shadows, and marveled at the twisted humor of fate as a familiar motorcycle approached and passed, slowing for the same station.

Well, this time she'd use fate for her own devices.

The Slayer snuck along the street, hidden in darkness, until she could see him stop and shut off the engine. Ripper dismounted and headed towards the doors, and she sprinted across the road, plastering herself against the station's wall, out of sight.

Ducking her head around the corner, she watched the doors until they opened again. Watched him until he straddled and kicked over the engine. Then dashed for the back of the cycle and leapfrogged to the seat behind him. Annie poked the end of her stake up under the back of his jacket and into his ribs, hard.

"It may not be a gun, but Mr. Pointy here will work wonders on your insides." He jerked his head around, eyes wide behind the visor. "Drive," she said.

* * *

"And then you were just, The Slayer," Willow said, "just like that."

"Just like that," Faith nodded.

"What did it feel like?"

The brunette shrugged. "I don't know. Not much different right then. Except that, instead of my hand really hurting when I hit him, his face started hurting. A lot."

"Wow."

"Yep, one punch made him smile, the next knocked his ass across the room."

"But you didn't feel different?"

Faith smiled. "Well I felt a whole lot better about hurting him than the other way around. But mostly I'd just felt good the whole day. Energetic, you know?"

"I can imagine." Kendra had described the experience similarly. But humbly. Everything her friend had ever said about being the Slayer had been with reverence.

Willow remembered sitting with the soft-spoken girl in the library, at the table below the stacks, Kendra telling her how proud Mr. Zabuto had been when she'd been Called, and how nervous she'd been to go work with Rupert (although she always called him Mr. Giles). Willow swallowed the memory before it overwhelmed her.

She cleared her throat. "So then you went in and staked Kakistos."

"I had to get by a few more vamps. It was a scene. But I had to get to Annie."

"Rupert mentioned Kakistos once, when we were doing research. He said the name meant 'worst of the worst'."

Faith nodded. "_Not_ a nice guy."

"Did you ever get to that alligator farm?"

The Slayer laughed. "Yeah, about a year and a half later. That's a much funnier story that I, uh, won't share right now. Kinda involves the cops. And nudity." She looked off, remembering. "And a really big dump truck."

"So, are you guys, like, on the run? From the police?" the redhead said with a touch of excitement in her voice.

Faith smiled, "So you have a thing for bad girls or boys?"

"Oh! Not really. Xander — my fiancé — he's a pretty straight arrow, but, but in a good way, not a boring way." She smiled slyly, "I guess Ripper is pretty bad boy, but he's more like a dad to me than boyfriend material. I did have a crush on him back when he was just the school librarian, though."

There was a pause. And then Faith said in a small voice, mostly to herself, "Rupert is Ripper?" Her face had gone pale, her eyes liquid. "Why didn't I know that?"

Willow shrugged, not understanding.

The brunette stood from the chair, backing away from the bed like it was a dangerous animal. "Then this is where they…" she started, but trailed off.

Willow looked at the bed, trying to figure out its anomaly. "They?" she asked. "Rip and…" And then she understood. She understood a lot.

Faith lifted her head and looked at the door, then the wall as if seeing through it towards the front of the store. "I have to go," she said suddenly, her attention still very much elsewhere.

The witch cocked her head and then heard it, faintly. Keys in the front door.

"Faith, wait," she said. "Untie me, and we can just talk. That's my fiancé, not Ripper."

"How do you know?"

"Ripper would come in the back."

"Doesn't matter… I still have to go."

"Faith, no one is going to hurt you."

"Willow?" came a call from the front.

"Faith? Faith!" The witch repeated the name more firmly, making the Slayer meet her eyes. "We can help you. And you can help us. You can trust us."

"I… I don't know. I don't know you." Willow could see the confusion and hurt in the girl's eyes. "I have to find Annie."

"Willow?" came the call again. "Ripper?"

"It's okay, Faith."

The brunette shook her head. "Is it? How do I know that? Annie was right, the Council tracked us down."

"That's not what this was," Willow nodded at the bed. "I know him."

"Well I don't. I don't know anything."

The witch's voice was patient. "Then we'll explain it to you."

She moved to the doorway. "I have to find her, know that she's safe."

"Faith, she's a Slayer."

"Who doesn't know she's on a Boca del Infierno." She turned away. "I'm sorry," she said, and then was gone.

Willow hung her head. She felt so sorry for the girl.

"Will?"

"In here, Xander."

"Hey, what's going on? Did you know the back door is open?" He appeared in the doorway. "Oh my God!" and he raced to her side, kneeling down. "Are you okay? What happened?"

"I'm okay," she smiled at his concern.

"Was it…?" he touched the purpling bruise on her jaw and she flinched.

"No, not Drusilla. Or a vampire or anything." She watched his face. "It was a Slayer."

"A…" he couldn't quite register what she'd said. He looked down and picked up the ice pack from the floor, looking at it with a frown.

"She was really sweet, actually."

Xander raised his eyebrows. "Sweet?" he indicated her condition.

"Could you untie me?" Willow asked hopefully.

"Oh, sorry," he moved around behind her.

"Thank the Goddess, because my arms were about to fall off. Not literally though."

He stood up after he finished untying her and started to massage her arms. "That much I figured, baby."

"Mmm… ow," she murmured at his ministrations.

"Why would a Slayer tie you up?"

She sighed. "Long story. I'll tell you later."

"A Slayer is back in town…" his voice was tight.

"Two, actually," she said. "Both the girls Rip saw at the Bronze last night."

"Two? How is that…"

"That's part of the longness." Willow craned her neck around to look at Xander. "Which means, by the way, that Wesley was right."

He looked at her blankly. "Okay, now I'm really worried about Drusilla."

She furrowed her brow at him.

He shrugged. "Because that's a clear sign of the Apocalypse."

Willow smiled softly, sadly, at her life's love.

* * *

She'd barely moved the stake during the ride out of town, and given how uneven some of the roads were, he was afraid it would draw blood at any moment. Not that he didn't deserve it.

Ripper thought, hands white-knuckled on the grips, of just how many signs he'd missed last night. Her strength, her attitude, her sense of Sunnydale's innate peculiarity… Of _course _she knew Angel was a vampire, why wouldn't she? And yet he'd missed it all. Or actually, ignored it. Because he'd been blinded by her. Overwhelmed.

He'd committed a grievous violation of the Council's rules. He'd compromised everything he'd been trained for. It didn't matter that he was an _ex_-Watcher, the rules were there for a reason. As he could tell from the look in her eyes when she'd grabbed him, or the tension in her arms as she clung to him, threatened to impale him, the implications, the emotional consequences, could be devastating.

The bike was traveling through California wilderness now, suburbs and city far behind, even other vehicles scarce. She withdrew the spike in his side and he turned his head. She nodded to a clear patch by the roadside, a dozen feet of grass before the tree line, and he slowed and stopped.

She was ten feet away by the time he shut off the cycle, removed his helmet, and dismounted. He left the headlight on against the dark night. Her back was to him. Ripper slid off his gloves and pocketed them, then ran a hand through his hair, waiting for her.

He could see her set her shoulders before she turned to face him. She seemed to almost glow in the darkness, her blonde hair caught just so in the cycle's light. Her voice was even, but hard. "Okay, just who the hell are you people?"

The Watcher could only answer honestly, take the risk, hope for the best. Hope she'd make it quick. "I think you know who I am. And I'm fairly certain who you are, Buffy Summers. The long lost, dead Slayer."

And then, with the crack in her angry calm, the awful pain and terror and history he saw in her face, Ripper knew it was over. He was done for. The Council was dead right about the consequences.

God forgive him, he was in love.

-


	12. Revelation

Spike pushed the small woman up as fiercely as he could. She was bearing down with all her preternatural strength on his neck with her hands, and it took him a moment to force his arms inside hers, and strike out sideways, buckling her elbows and breaking her grip. The blond vampire put an arm across her collarbone and pushed, and the wolf-girl tumbled backwards off the sarcophagus and to the stone floor.

"Now that's not bloody funny!" Spike raged, jumping to the ground himself.

His erstwhile lover looked up at him, a twinkle in her otherwise wild and crazy eyes. "No, it wouldn't be, if it weren't true." Her voice was as thickly British as he'd ever heard it. "I leave you for a few months and you're whoring about with the Wolf girl?"

Spike froze. Then he leaned forward, as if he might see into her soul just by getting closer. "Dru?"

The blonde form stood with languor. She cocked her head at him playfully. "Hello Daddy."

"Drusilla?" The vampire repeated, still unable to wrap his mind about it.

She waved her hand at him dismissively. "Of course it's Drusilla. Your little puppy would still be sucking sugar through a needle if I hadn't come around."

"I can't believe it."

She closed her eyes and started to turn about in the center of the room. "I'm sensing that, love. Along with a whole world of new things!" Then she stopped abruptly and stepped away from him.

Spike's voice was still laced with a touch of skepticism. "You just seem a bit — lucid — for my Dru."

She lifted a curtain to look outside. "A little time off does wonders for a girl's perspective."

Spike chuckled, leaning back against the sarcophagus. "Only Drusilla could come back from Hell perfectly sane. Although the someone else's body trick is new."

"It's just a rental."

The blond vampire watched her for a moment. "And how does 'ruca feel about it?"

She dropped the velvet drape and meandered past him and over towards the fireplace. "The stars are watching her, Spike… but Miss Edith has her face turned to the wall."

"Maybe lucid was an exaggeration," he said, turning his head to follow her.

"It's a lovely holiday coming near. When the Moon was twice black and soon will be bright, while the day is still shorter than night." Drusilla stopped and reversed her path, trailing her fingernails along the surface of the crypt he leaned upon. "Aren't you glad I'm back, Spike?"

He turned and moved to her, wrapping his arms about her waist. "Of course, baby. I'd prefer to have the whole of you, though."

"Oh, but you're going to, soon as we make the stars hide!" The vampire in wolf's clothing tilted back her head, raising a hand to lightly trace his jaw. "And then won't we have a beautiful party!"

* * *

At the hurt Ripper saw in her, he had to continue. He had to fill the empty silence, the human silence untouched by the wind rushing in the dark trees. Had to try and avoid what his heart had just screamed to him, what he was terrified was written on his face. "What, what I'd like to know is, why are you here now? And is that the other Slayer with you, the new one? Faith?"

Her voice was not a Slayer's. It was a little girl's. "I told you, my name is Annie."

He blinked. "Of course, from Buffy Anne, as I recall."

Annie shook her head. She took a breath, and a step towards him, the anger back in an instant. "And you know why I'm here too." She raised her hands. "That's what you fucking people do, right? Somewhere in some book it said I'd get off the train at this stop, so you and your people came here and waited."

The ex-Watcher took a tentative step towards her as well. "Actually, I expected you — well, somebody — to show up three years ago. Then another was Called and showed up instead, so I assumed you were dead." His voice had a trace of ironic humor to it. "Trust a Slayer to prove me wrong."

Annie stared him down, no patience for joking. "So where is she?"

"Where is who?"

"The one who showed up instead of me."

Ripper paused for a moment. "She died."

The Slayer laughed bitterly. "Used her up, looking for the next one." She was upon him now, and her fury would have made a lesser man cringe. "Well you can't fucking have her! I don't know who's worse, you or the vampires. At least you can avoid them if you try hard enough."

His eyes were narrowed, his hands on his hips. "You've done a good job of avoiding us, I'd say."

Again she raised her hands. "And yet somehow I manage to get off the train right at your stop."

"You know why you're here?" Ripper yelled. "Because _they're _here. The vampires and the demons. Not because of me. It's _your_ destiny. This place is a center of mystical convergence, and that's what drew you. I was just sent here to prepare you for it." He saw a break in her façade, but couldn't stop his anger. "If the Council had their way, you'd have gotten off the train to no one, because I would've been gone two years past. But I stayed to try and make a difference," he snarled accusingly, "since no one else was trying."

Annie crumbled. "I was ten years old when Lothos killed my family, you son of a _bitch_!" she sobbed, and pounded her fists on his chest. She didn't mean to hurt, but drove him backwards nonetheless, tipping the bike with a crash as he tried to grab for it. "_And_ my Watcher. Could you prepare me for that?" Ripper caught her arms, and she let him, broken. "You wanna give it a try? Faith'll let you, because she doesn't know any better."

Ripper pulled her close, but she was stiff in his arms. "I know it's hard."

She pulled away again, stepping back. "What do you know! You're a Watcher! You're the one that sends us out to die!"

"I don't send you anywhere, Annie. You go out because you're Chosen to. I try to help you live."

Her voice was bitter again. "And that worked out great for you, didn't it?"

"Ah, yes, there it is," Ripper said through pursed lips. "Kendra stood and died, you ran and lived. So that makes it right."

"It makes me alive."

"Really?" the ex-Watcher snorted. "Is that what you are, alive? Hiding in shadows, avoiding all the danger, hopping a train if it gets too difficult, never making any friends… yes, that's just a perfect life, isn't it?"

"Stop." He could see her jaw trembling in the skewed light from the fallen cycle.

"Oh, and there's the little fact that you _did_ die, or else neither Kendra nor Faith would have been Called."

"Stop it!" she turned her back to him. "You have no right… you don't know what it's like!"

Ripper stepped to her, taking her shoulders gently in his hands. "I know _exactly_ what it's like, Annie. You lost your family and your Watcher. That's a horrible, horrible tragedy, and you have all my sympathy. I lost the woman I loved, and my Slayer. So I know what you've gone through. I _know_ it."

Her voice was tiny. "You weren't ten."

"No… I wasn't. But you're not ten anymore."

"I can't do this."

He sighed, and released her. "Then don't. You know where the trains leave. My friends and I have lived on a Hellmouth for quite some time without the benefit of a Slayer, and we're still standing."

Annie half-turned. "You'd just… let me go? What kind of Watcher are you?"

"An _ex_-Watcher."

"But the Council—"

"I don't work for the Council any more," Ripper stepped to the cycle and righted it. "I'm not going to 'order' you to stay on their behalf. You're your own person. Do what you'd like."

"I'd like…"

He turned to face her, leaning back against the seat. "I can't convince you to stay, Annie, however much you want me to. You have to do that on your own."

She frowned. "I don't want you to convince me of anything."

He crossed his arms. "Yes you do. If you were going to leave, you'd have done it. You wouldn't have dragged me out here in the middle of nowhere but for two reasons: kill me and dump the body, or convince you in a place where you couldn't get away and avoid the subject."

"How about getting you to answer my first question?" the Slayer countered, hands on her hips. "Who the hell are you people, so I'd at least know what Faith was getting herself into?"

"Fine. I'm an ex-Watcher. My friends are a werewolf, a reformed vampire, a clairvoyant, a witch, an ex-demon, a soldier, and another Watcher. We defend the innocent against the ravages of evil atop the Mouth of Hell. A Slayer would be a big help, I can't tell you how much. Two would be even better." Ripper stood, turned, and took the cycle by the grips, flipping up the stand. "Any more than that, I'll have to fill you in later, because it's been a long day, I'm planning to save the world early next week, and I'm honestly very tired." He began pushing the cycle towards the trees, headlight flashing off the trunks and framing the inky darkness between.

Annie puzzled at him. "Where are you going?"

He nodded towards the trees. "This is Breaker's Woods. I have a cabin nearby, and I'd like to get some sleep in the few hours of night remaining. If your departure can wait until morning, you're welcome to join me."

She thought for a moment, wiping her cheeks dry, and then began to follow. "Like I couldn't just take that bike from you and go."

"I frankly wish you would. It's rather heavy pushing it."

The Slayer grabbed the handlebars just inside his grip as she reached him, and eased it out of his hands, still pushing in the same direction. "My old man," she muttered, a trace of humor and fire back in her voice.

Falling just a half step behind, Ripper swallowed, wondering just how many of the connotations therein she meant.

* * *

Angel couldn't sleep. If there was one thing his lifestyle – his or any of his friends' – didn't afford, it was a normal sleep pattern, and he'd learned to grab it when it came, but right now it was the demon in him that was wakeful, not the man, and that disturbed him. The beast reacted to this portal stirring, to be sure, but also to whatever he'd sensed from Ripper's girls, and, of course, the memories.

He'd slipped out from beside Cordelia, and now stalked the lower floor of the mansion, trying desperately to shake aside the memories. The stone was cold under his bare feet; he'd humanly huddled in his robe and stoked a fire in the hearth against the chill, and it cast his prowling form about the walls in hulking shadows, flickering in time with the thoughts in his head.

All the memories.

Always there, lingering about at the edges of his mind, waiting for an opening to slip in and highlight his misery. These last few years had stocked him well with new ones to push back the nightmare images of his century and a half of pure black, but at moments like these they never seemed enough.

Coming to Sunnydale to help the Slayer, and meeting a headstrong and beautiful sixteen year old who stole his heart; then having his last headstrong and beautiful love – his vampiric sire Darla – try and kill her.

The precious gesture of the willful, thoroughly modern Cordelia dressing up as a European noblewoman from the days of his youth; then having another shade from his past, one who'd dressed that way herself – his vampiric daughter Drusilla – call down the Curse of Janus and trap her in that costume spiritually.

He looked out the French doors to the courtyard and the slanting moonlight, so stark and cold. From the Master to Spike, Angel's progenitors to progeny, everything in his past colored his present. He put a hand to his forehead and wandered from the room aimlessly.

Cordy was right. When would she leave them alone? When would they get their life back?

Angel opened the door from the kitchen to the garage, and stepped out. He leaned against the hood of his black convertible. His eyes roamed over the workbench where he repaired his weapons, the halberds and morning stars fixed to a pegboard above it. Who was he kidding? This _was_ his life, wasn't it? Full of violence and death. Cordy didn't want this life, the one he'd brought to her.

He rose from the car and stepped to the bench, and the old refrigerator beside it. He opened its door, soaking in the chill, staring at its sole contents: a dozen pints of packaged blood. Cordy didn't want this.

"Midnight snack?" came a voice from the doorway. "Or just that guy thing where you look in the refrigerator but don't take anything?"

She was adorned in a plain white cotton nightgown, buttons and a little tie above the swell of her breasts; her feet were bare. She leaned against the frame, hands holding her elbows again, head tilted while she regarded him.

"The latter I think." He closed the fridge.

"Couldn't sleep?"

"Yeah. I mean, no."

"Prefer to brood?" her eyes twinkled.

His lips twitched to a smile. "Don't _prefer_ to, but…"

"Too many thoughts," she nodded. "I know the feeling. Have it, in fact."

Angel looked at her. "You're cold again."

"Duh, I'm standing in a very chilly garage, Mr. I Don't Have a Body Temperature." She half-turned. "Come inside; I think someone got a nice fire going."

He smiled, and came closer.

Then she turned back and stopped him with a palm in the middle of his chest. "You _have_ eaten, right? I don't want any potential nibbling to get excessive."

Ah, the realities of vampire-safe sex. "I had a… I drank earlier."

Cordelia had brought the blankets, some pillows, and the down comforter from their bed and arranged them in front of the hearth already. She pulled aside the quilt and lay down, holding it back waiting for him, rather than covering herself. For a moment Angel just looked at her, her nightgown turned orange by the firelight, thick brown hair cascading untroubled over her shoulder, and his heart broke from the beauty of her. Then she smiled, and reached up a hand to draw him out of his reverie and down to her.

"I think we should not think for a while," the seer said.

"You think?" the vampire smiled mischievously, and pulled the comforter over himself, settling beside her, facing her.

Propped on her elbow, her free hand moved beneath the blanket and tugged loose the belt of his robe. "I think," she answered.

Angel rest his hand on her hip and kissed her. He felt her warmth through his palm, and her lips, and his body drank it in, and sought more. But he held himself in check, enjoying the agonizing slowness with which Cordy's hand drifted down his chest as the robe fell open. Their kisses were languorous, and soon her tongue teased open his lips and tangled with his playfully.

Cordy's hand pushed the robe up and over his shoulder and Angel pulled back his arm to disengage it. He pushed up to shake it off the other arm and away, and it left him above her. She turned to her back, and he leaned down atop her full, his flesh and hers separated only by the thin cotton of her nightgown. She moaned slightly, enjoying the weight of him, and he kissed his way across her cheek and down, to the hollow of her shoulder. Angel ran his tongue across her skin and though his eyes were closed he knew she was smiling. That little vampire joke as he nibbled her neck.

Her hands traveled up the backs of his arms, then over the broad muscles of his back, while one of his hands propped him up as the other tickled her ribs through the gown, then cupped her breast gently. His mouth was at the notch of her throat, and kissed back upwards, over her chin, to her lips once more.

Angel pulled back just a bit to look at Cordy's face in the ruddy light. There was a flush to her cheeks, and a hunger in her eyes. He raised a hand and touched the tips of his fingers to her temple. The visions that intruded just beyond his touch gave her such agony; he was glad to take her away from that, if just for a while.

Cordy smiled, reading his thoughts, and raised her own hand to his forehead, where the evidence of his own eternal torment would appear. Angel caught her meaning: she took him away too. They took each other.

His fingers pulled the tie and expertly undid the buttons on her gown, his lips hungrily following just beyond. Cordelia pulled the fabric up to her hips with her hands, then pushed him off so she could sit up and remove it entirely.

They lay down again, skin to skin, molding to one another, her heat to his cool, her love to his. They moved together slowly, deliberately, specifically not thinking. It was all about feeling, and needing, enjoying and fulfilling.

The fire burned lower. As Cordy lay beside him, very still, her eyelids drifting shut, Angel felt fatigue creeping upon him as well, and for a moment believed it would outrace all those thoughts to overtake him. But it couldn't quite.

He looked at her suddenly. "Why are you with me?"

"What?" her eyes opened.

"I mean, I've brought you so much misery. There's so much horror all around me, following me."

She was frowning deeply. "You haven't brought me misery."

"Yes I have. My past—"

She covered his mouth gently with her hand. "Is something we can't change. But it's also what brought you to me." Her hand moved to sift fingers through his hair. "I'll take one to have the other."

"But it's so hard. There's so much sorrow."

Cordelia sat up and looked at him. "Why should this be easy? This is love; love's hard. It's also worth it."

Angel stared into her eyes. There was only honesty there. When had he ever gotten that from anyone else? So pure.

He pushed himself up and pressed his lips to hers again, and the intensity would have left him breathless if he breathed. She took it in, his urgency, and touched the side of his face with her palm. He relaxed at the gentle touch, and the kiss softened. He felt amazed at how she did that. Their lips pulled apart, and they looked in one another's eyes for a moment. Then Cordelia kissed him one more time, briefly, on the lips, and then once on his cheek, on the tears he hadn't realized were there.

She lay down on her stomach, head on her arm atop the pillow, face turned towards the fire, but her eyes closed. He watched her for a moment, then, lying down beside her again, ran the backs of his fingers down the back of her arm. She smiled warmly, before he too closed his eyes.

* * *

"What exactly are you looking for?"

Wesley looked up from the news clippings and Council papers scattered across the table between himself and his twelve hundred year old girlfriend. It was a round kitchen table standing in what passed for Wesley's kitchen, which was actually one end of the central living space of his smallish apartment. Like most of his furniture it was fairly new, a fact that distressed the Englishman no end. Back home in the Watcher's Compound, everything one could touch but for perishables had a delightful history to it, if one cared to investigate such. But here, the small stipend he could still eke out of the Council for "continuing service" didn't afford anything so rich. Perhaps that's why he found Anya so intriguing, as she had no end to the tales of her history. "I'm sorry?" he asked.

She set down the book she'd carried from the couch on the table. "I've spent hours looking through arcane and entirely overwritten volumes on mystical thresholds and magical convergence factors and you are clearly researching something entirely different. If we're done worrying about Drusilla I need to know, because I just bought three new flavors of tea for you and I have to figure out which one goes best with this kind of apocalypse. Plus my head hurts from translating Latin and Gaelic, neither of which were offered as foreign language options at Sunnydale High, I might add, which is a gross prejudice against people of my century."

The Watcher and wolf shared a smile. Wesley lifted his china cup. "This Earl Grey is just fine, dear."

"Really? I was hoping to try the blood orange. Angel recommended it."

"Feel the irony," Oz said.

"Oh, it doesn't have actual blood in it. It's a—" Anya stepped to the cupboard and pulled out the small tin, perusing its label, "a citrus-based blend of orange peels, hibiscus flowers, apple pieces, rose hip and safflower."

Wesley smiled at her again. "Really dear, this is fine." He looked back at the table.

Oz caught her crestfallen look. "Actually if you're making a fresh pot…" he lifted his own empty cup. Anya smiled and moved to heat some water.

The Watcher slid a large U.S. map, marked with a carefully color-coded selection of dots, over in front of his guest as he capped the marker in his hands. He pointed with the pen. "The Seattle article is from this past November. Then Whispering Pines in December. With the Sacramento report—"

"And Salinas in January…" Oz added, finger down on a small square of newspaper.

"It all fits together," Wesley concluded with a flourish.

"Well, makes a pretty good line."

"Cases of 'neck rupture' and 'reported gang activity' ending with appearances by a pair of runaway girls, who then vanished when the police became involved."

The musician lifted the scrap of paper, frowning at it. "A break-in at a sporting goods store is a little thin."

"Not when the two young female suspects broke out of a police car and escaped."

"Also, not the noblest pursuit for a world savior."

Wesley shook his head. "She's clearly without the proper guidance." He drew himself up as Oz inwardly cringed. "There's no other reasonable conclusion. Faith is my Slayer."

There was the punctuation of a crash as Anya dropped the kettle in the kitchen sink.

"There's a _Slayer_ in Sunnydale!" she exclaimed.

"That's the current satellite picture," Oz replied.

She turned on Wesley pointedly. "Why didn't you tell me?"

The Englishman shrugged. "I didn't have the proper evidence. I'm rather noted amongst our group for crying 'Wolf!' No offense," he offered Oz.

"None taken," the young man responded with a smile.

Anya moved over to examine the table's contents. "So you're trying to find her?"

Wesley leaned over, palms pressed to the flat surface. "First I'd like to ascertain why she's here."

"I think it's obvious," Anya blinked.

"You do?" he frowned.

"She's here to kill me."

The two men's eyes met again.

Anya scowled. "Hey, I saw that look! I was quite the famous demon in my heyday."

"But you're surely not suggesting that the Slayer traveled…" Wesley's hand traced a looping line across the map from Massachusetts to California, connecting all the various dots, "…all the way here just to eliminate you. Or any one demon for that matter."

Oz cleared his throat. "I'd venture she's just on the run."

"And if so," the Brit continued, "she needs my — our — help."

"No, she needs to be stopped," Anya wouldn't be placated. "Before she kills me."

"You do remember that I'm a _Watcher_, don't you dear?" Wesley gentled. "This is my sacred duty."

"Okay, just stop that," the ex-demon's voice trembled slightly. "You're being all reasonable and I need you to think of _me_."

The phone rang. "I'll get that," Oz said immediately.

As the wolf retreated, Wesley moved to Anya's side and took her hands in his. He looked into her eyes. "All right. I'm thinking only of you. Tell me what's troubling you."

Anya dropped her eyes and fidgeted slightly. "I just have this terrible feeling that one way or the other, I'm going to die. If we don't stop Drusilla and she comes back, she's going to kill me for giving Angel a soul."

"But that was _Drusilla's_ wish," he frowned.

"It didn't exactly work out for her, did it?"

"No, I don't suppose."

She looked back up at him. "And if we get this Slayer's help and stop her, the Slayer will kill me for being a vengeance demon."

The Watcher cocked his head. "I'm certain she will take current circumstances into account."

"But how can you be? This Slayer doesn't work for the Council as far as we know."

"No, she doesn't. Not yet," he answered, his voice implying that would change.

Anya was unswayed by his confidence. "And if she won't?"

His hand touched her cheek. "Then I'll protect you."

She couldn't help but smile at his bravado this time.

"Wait," Oz said into the phone, "define 'long conversation'."

On the other end of the line, Willow's voice took on that smallish quality that meant she was being elusive. "That's not important right now."

"Did she hurt you?"

"Only a little. Oz, we have to find her. When she took off, she was going to look for her friend Annie, so…"

"No sign of Rip?"

He could hear a little hesitation. "Not yet. And I'd rather have you find her."

"Willow?" Oz prompted.

"Well, Annie and Ripper… well, they…"

The wolf nodded, getting it. "They slept together."

"Wait, you knew?"

"Yeah."

"How?"

He smiled. "It's a guy thing."

There was a pause. Then a catch of breath. "Wait, Xander doesn't tell—"

"No, no," he interrupted. "Not going there."

"Whew. Good." Oz was positive she was blushing. "Anyway, with Ripper and Annie, I got the distinct impression that wasn't cool with Faith."

"Really?"

"Yeah… I definitely got a vibe that there's something going on there, with her and Annie."

"A vibe, huh?" the musician pondered.

"It's a girl thing."

Oz smiled. "Particularly in this case."

"Oh!" Willow laughed timidly. "That too. Anyway, if you take Wesley, you have to tell him that he's got to keep his 'I'm a Watcher' spiel to himself for the moment, and to especially _not_ call the Council. They're terrified of the Council. Particularly Annie."

The wolf frowned. "Why would she know about the Council?"

"A long story, but they're _both_ Slayers."

"Huh," was his only reply.

"So you'll…?"

Oz nodded. "I'm on it. You okay?"

"Yeah, Xander's here."

"Good. Get some rest." He put a little Rupert into his voice. "We'll discuss what 'only a little' means in the morning."

"Yes sir," she smiled. "Bye!"

The wolf put down the phone and stepped back to the table with the others. "I'm on hunt again."

"A new lead?" Wesley asked.

"More of a new need. Willow had a visit from our girl just after we left."

The Watcher was attentive, his girlfriend uncomfortable. "Shall I come with you?" the Englishman said.

"For now, you should get back to our vampire guest," Oz shook his head. "This," he indicated the table's contents, "is a 'case closed'. Faith's a Slayer. _But_," he continued at Wesley's look, "for now it stays in the group. Do _not_ call the Council."

"But that's my job."

"It can wait a day or so. Trust me on this, Wes."

The Watcher saw the resolve on the young man's face. In his time in Sunnydale, he'd learned a great many things, and one was the wisdom of Daniel Osborne. "You certain you won't need backup?" he asked simply.

Oz smiled. "No more vamp nests tonight."

Wesley and Anya went back to studying cross-dimensional rifts and the associated magicks after the werewolf left, but the Watcher had trouble concentrating for the rest of the night.

* * *

While Willow straightened up Ripper's room, Xander double-checked the locks, and went to do something he called a "perimeter check". After Faith's appearance, he was adamant about avoiding a repeat intrusion. Willow smiled at his determination. Though she'd rather not be in peril, it always melted her heart to see him enter his "protective" mode.

As she slipped the last of the Watcher diaries onto the shelf, her hand lingered on the spine, fingers touching the dates with not a little reverence. Memories flitted through her mind, and slowly a smile built on her face at one in particular. It took just a moment of scrounging in the storeroom, then among the kitchen cabinets, to find what she needed.

After finishing in the shop proper, Xander noticed the kitchen was dim as he opened the door from the front. Senses alert, he let his eyes adjust before stepping through. Glancing around cautiously, he spotted a crystal sphere on the table. It shone with a spark from deep inside, but more than that, cast little flecks of light upon the walls and ceiling like stars. And sitting upon the countertop was Willow, a vanilla ice cream cone in either hand. She held one out to her fiancé as he approached.

"Our first date," the soldier smiled. "We're not planning to repeat the vampire interruption part, are we?"

"No, but the kiss part would be okay," she replied, her pretty face and auburn hair almost aglow in the soft light. "Required, in fact."

He obliged, then, pulling away, tipped her nose with a dollop of ice cream. She squealed playfully, and he kissed away the confection.

"So what do we owe this to?" Xander asked.

Willow licked at her cone where it was dripping to her fingers. "To not forgetting."

"Not forgetting what?"

"We spend so much time fighting off our demons, and so much of the rest planning for the ones that will come around the corner next, that it's hard to remember how lucky we really are."

"To have each other," Xander finished her thought.

"And to have had the friends we've had. And…" her voice caught a bit, "the ones we've lost."

A memory flashed through him: researching with Giles in the library, and glimpsing Willow and Miss Calendar laughing in the office as they practically wrestled Kendra into a dress – her first – for the Spring Fling dance, just hours before the Slayer would be gone forever.

He smiled sadly at her. "To not forgetting," he said, and watched as she blinked rapidly and looked away.

"So," the soldier cleared his throat, "Rip keeps ice cream in his fridge. Who'd a thought?"

She turned back to him, a thankful look in her eyes. "You're dripping," she pointed at his cone.

"And you taste like vanilla," he returned, and leaned in close for another tasty kiss.

* * *

For his part, Oz was avoiding memories as he drove through Sunnydale's empty streets. His lifelong taciturn nature belied the depth and volume of his thoughts, but as part of controlling the wolf, Ethan had taught him to be placid of mind as well as demeanor. Focus was key, and right now his focus was on finding a Slayer.

It was intriguing, the idea of a Slayer here in Sunnydale again. And not one but two. Intriguing, and slightly terrifying. He'd learned enough from Ripper, in the times the man would broach the subject still painful to him, to know that a marshalling of the forces of good was fairly proportional to those of evil. Like someone above set up some brutal game and made sure the teams were even before they watched it play out.

As he turned up a block past Sunnydale Mall and approached Shady Hills for the second time that evening, he let his mind follow that trail. Aside from the usual Scoobies, there were now two Slayers. On the other side he knew that Drusilla was attempting a return engagement. Though he'd missed Act One of her Sunnydale show, he'd been around when she tried to reassemble The Judge, and later when she'd tried to release Acathla. But for all her hi-jinx, the group had always been able to handle her, if not without a measure of suffering involved. So he couldn't help thinking, there must be more here. Something he was missing.

His eyes searched the shadows beyond the graveyard's perimeter, beyond the silent stones flashing in his passing headlamps, seeing nothing as he finally pulled away and pointed himself towards Restfield, next on his ghoulish list. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe Drusilla's escaping from Hell would unleash a flood, the kind they'd fought to stem from the Hellmouth itself more than once. That would certainly be enough; maybe there was nothing more.

Then the night air carried a familiar scent through the window, and Oz tapped his brakes. He pulled to a spot on the curb and shut off the van, climbing out and stepping a few paces away so the warm engine wouldn't cloud his senses. Closing his eyes, he lifted his nose to the breeze.

Swallowing on a suddenly dry throat, the young man headed back towards a nearby field and the cemetery beyond, leaping the tall iron fence without even checking for potential witnesses, his skin prickled into gooseflesh, and his urgency suddenly very great.

* * *

It was the darkest, deepest part of night when Faith found herself back in a cemetery. Her only thought had been to get out, get away from the magic shop and, more importantly, Ripper's bedroom, and she didn't know what part of that had led her here other than some sense of familiarity.

It should have disturbed her more, she thought with a chuckle, that her warm comfort place was a cold graveyard. But such was her life. Her life with Annie.

And, she suspected, her life after Annie.

The Slayer slowed her unconsciously quick stride to a calmer stroll. The moon had set a while earlier, and a breeze was swaying the silhouettes of trees against the velvet sky. Her head, full of jumbled, worried-angry-painful thoughts, cleared to take on the hyperaware, action-ready Slayer mode that suited her better, that she was more used to.

Boca del Infierno. That explained all the cemeteries, she surmised. Also explained the number of vamps they'd seen so far. And there'd be more where they came from. Still, it wasn't like they'd overrun the town or anything; they didn't walk down the center of the street after sunset in game face.

She herself had gone looking for trouble earlier, and that's what put her in the middle of a nest. If B was looking to run, she was avoiding trouble. She could handle herself. This place might be Hell on Earth for John Q. Citizen, but for Annie, who knew what to look for night after night, it was relatively safe.

Then Faith's Slayer-sharp ears caught a howl, an unearthly keening that made her flesh crawl. She immediately remembered the wolf-boy, the one she'd later seen at the magic shop, attacking her in the cemetery before.

Perhaps _safe_ wasn't the right word.

She puzzled that in her mind. The pretty redhead claimed they were on the same side. From what she'd read in those diaries, Willow and her friends seemed like the good guys. Even if the rest of Annie's dreaded Council was a bunch of pricks, these guys here in Sunnywhatever seemed like they actually cared.

As she replayed the earlier events, she realized she'd only thought the wolf was threatening her and the other couple. He'd attacked the vampire, she'd assumed for food or whatever, but maybe he was just patrolling, like Faith had been doing. She probably owed him an apology; she'd roughed him up pretty good.

The Slayer turned in the direction she'd heard the call. A breeze stirred her hair, behind her as she walked. He'd know she was coming, at least.

There was no further sound but, eyes straining against the night, Faith thought she caught a glimpse of light fur, darting among the headstones. The motion stopped as she got closer, and then she heard a low snarl. For a moment she hesitated, wondering how clear-headed a werewolf was in beast form. Hell, she'd never even seen a werewolf before tonight.

"Look," she began, trying to pinpoint where she'd heard it last, "I want to say I'm sorry for before."

No sound, but she thought she caught some movement to her left.

"I... uh, I didn't realize we were on the same side," she tried again, turning.

Now a rustling, but off to her right.

Faith twisted back around. "O...kay, I guess you're not in a conversational mood." She still couldn't see a thing. Didn't werewolves need a full moon? That would certainly be easier. "Or maybe you don't even understand me with all the fur in your ears. Which frankly reminds me of an old math teacher of mine."

She stepped forward, her feet shuffling through the grass, loud in her ears as she struggled to hear the animal. Her shin banged into a knee-high, wrought-iron fence surrounding a family plot, and she cursed under her breath.

Her patience gone, she spread her arms and raised her voice into the darkness. "What I'm saying is, I'd like for us to be—" Faith saw two blurs of motion: one coming from directly in front of her, over the tombstones — a ferocious, furry beast, limbs and claws wide and reaching, snout open baring serious fangs; the other from the corner of her eye — a smallish, man-shaped blur that slammed into her shoulder, wrapped its arms around her and took her to the ground just in time for the furry blur to sail over their heads.

"—friends," Faith finished as the air went out of her, to the face of the black-haired wolf-boy, inches above her as she lay on her back beneath him.

"That'd be great," he said in return. "But I'm thinking _after_ we escape is better."

Faith blinked at him, very confused. "Uhm, you're—" she began.

The young man rolled off of her and sprang to his feet. He leaned down, grabbed her hand, and quickly pulled her upright. "Oz. You're Faith, and we're going."

"And who is that then?" Faith asked, eyes after the _other_ beast, which had howled in disappointment and flashed eyes and teeth back in their direction.

"Someone even a Slayer doesn't want to fight without backup," Oz replied, still pulling.

Faith shrugged, decided to go with it, and let him lead her in a dead run.

Oz didn't have Slayer speed, but seemed to have a thorough knowledge of the cemetery, so Faith stayed just behind him and had to use all her agility as he juked around and hurtled over gravestones like a professional football player heading for the endzone. The howls dropping further and further behind — and the occasional cries of pain — told her their pursuer did _not_ have such knowledge.

In the glow of a streetlamp outside the cemetery, Faith could see the boxy form of a van just beyond the tall fence. Oz slid to a crouch at the barrier, hands out, fingers laced together.

"Foot!"

Faith barely had to break stride to plant and take his launch to the other side. He had to retreat though, to get a running start for his leap, and in the delay, the light-furred creature emerged from the shadows, froth dripping from its jaws. Spotting its prey still within reach, it leapt.

"Oz!" she called a warning.

He immediately dropped, and the lupine form sailed over his head. It lost footing as it hit earth again, and rolled hard against the fence with a loud rattle. Faith reached through the bars and grabbed two handfuls of fur. Oz came out of his crouch and bolted directly towards them, then used the beast's body as a ladder and came up and over the fence. But not before it lashed out a claw and raked his departing leg. He winced as he hit the ground.

The creature turned enough to swipe the arm through the bars at Faith. She backed away and it missed by inches. Moving forwards again, the Slayer pushed the grasping arm back through the fence around another bar, leaving the werewolf momentarily entangled.

Behind her, she heard the van come to life, headlights washing over them. In the seconds before she turned away and towards safety, Faith saw the illuminated face of the beast, and they locked eyes. She couldn't sort out the mixture of signals her Slayer-senses offered her brain, but as the van pulled away moments later, and the cemetery shrank in the passenger-side mirror, Faith's deepest human instincts told her that Boca del Infierno was not an exaggeration.

That thing had definitely come from Hell.

-


	13. Conversations

The light bounced up and down the tree trunks ahead as Annie pushed the cycle over the uneven ground. They'd been silent for a while, but her head was buzzing with questions.

"So what did you mean, 'a reformed vampire'?"

Ripper glanced at her as they walked, side by side. "Just that. He doesn't kill to feed anymore."

"How can it just stop?" she frowned at him. "How can you trust it?"

"_He_ has a soul. And with it, a conscience," he answered. "I trust that as well as any man's."

She snorted, and Ripper looked at her sidelong. "I'm not much for trusting conscience in men, much less— hey, did you say 'ex-demon'?"

He smiled. "Just catching that now?"

"Lot on my mind," she returned, lips twisted in a grin. "So, what, another soul? Do those things grow around here or something?"

"Actually," the ex-Watcher ran a hand through his sandy hair, "that's a long story."

"Sounds like you have a lot of those. But I'm not going anywhere." She caught his look. "At the moment."

He stepped over a cluster of roots and around a tree, eyes picking his steps carefully in the dimness. "Anyanka was a vengeance demon. She was drawn to Sunnydale when one of my young lady friends was in a weak moment, dealing with some considerable emotional pain."

"Young lady friend?"

Ripper's lips quirked. "A young friend who is a lady."

"Lady _friends_?"

"The plural. Standard usage when there is more than one." He paused for a beat. "Not that I don't mind the jealous tone—"

"Don't start presuming, mister, I'm just gathering information."

He shrugged, still grinning. "Then for your _information_, you've met this friend. Her name is Cordelia."

"Ah, the bartender. Can't say I'm surprised: a vampire boyfriend would definitely wave the 'bring on the pain' flag for me."

He considered. "Well, you're a Slayer. That's certainly a natural reaction."

"Vampire, Slayer, dead vampire. S'all I'm sayin'." Annie looked over at him. "So what happened?"

His voice took on a sad tone. "A clairvoyant vampire gifted Cordelia with visions, just before we sent the vampire to Hell."

"Visions?"

"Of coming evils."

Annie quirked an eyebrow. "Wouldn't that be pretty useful?"

Ripper sighed. "They are. They are also extraordinarily painful, physically and mentally, to Cordelia. As a gift, they were intended to burden her soul, drive her away from her friends and her own humanity, and eventually to kill her."

"Okay, that part's way harsh."

"Harsh indeed. Drusilla — the vampire — had kidnapped and tortured Cordelia before as well, simply because Angel loves her."

Annie was silent for a long moment. She knew this kind of pain. Finally she shook her head and moved on. "What happened with the demon?"

"With Anya? Well," he continued at her nod, "the power of vengeance demons lies in The Wish, cast using a magical amulet. Cordelia wished that Kendra," he swallowed past the lump in his throat at her name, "my Slayer, had never come to Sunnydale. Quite altered the reality here, I surmise, from how she describes it."

"Altered it how?"

"An old and powerful vampire whom my Slayer had killed in this reality, wasn't killed in the other. Sunnydale had gone rapidly downhill. Fortunately, Anya's amulet was destroyed, and that reality was spun back off."

Annie stopped the bike. "Uhm, huh?"

Rupert paused as well, facing her. "The Wish uses magical energy to pull another dimension, parallel to this, into contact with this reality. The other dimension superimposes on this one. Or perhaps it shifts the wisher and the demon into the other reality — the quantum mechanical details are not entirely clear. But then they wouldn't be, would they?" He smiled, pleased at his joke.

"For future reference," Annie blinked, "physics humor will be lost on me."

He grinned sheepishly. "Anyway, destroying the amulet reversed the effects. The other reality is no longer linked with this one."

"But it could still exist?"

"Possibly."

She shivered. "Gives me the wiggins."

"I'll presume that's bad." He gestured ahead. "Shall we go? It's not much farther." As they started walking again he continued. "In any case, with her amulet destroyed, Anya was powerless, trapped as a high school student. And flunking math," he smiled, thinking of Willow tutoring her endlessly at the store.

"You didn't kill her?"

"She's human now, Annie."

"Technicality."

He stopped again. "I'm afraid, Miss Summers, that if you do choose to stay, you'll find that 'vampire, Slayer, dead vampire' won't work as a universal credo."

Annie paused the cycle again, looking at him in the dimness that was beginning to brighten with the coming of dawn. Unbidden came the thought that he was very cute when his back was up. "It does _most_ of the time though, right? Like when they're evil?"

He found his indignation fleeting. "Yes, you'll find your fill of evil things in Sunnydale."

"Home of the unmistakably bad, check." She smiled. "Man, did you sound like a Watcher then."

"When I was scolding you?"

"Mmm-hmm."

"I do apologize. Thought I'd gotten over that."

They moved on, silent for a while. Reminded, Annie fought to keep her mind from going there, but she couldn't stop it. Unable to hold back, she blurted out the question. "Did you know?"

"I'm sorry?" Ripper puzzled.

"Did you know I was a Slayer when you… when we…?"

He froze, horrified. "Annie, no. Why would I? The Council thought you were dead." His voice quieted. "It was thought you died with Lothos."

She said nothing. The woods about them were still. She could see the trees thinning out ahead and, silhouetted against the lightening horizon, the boxy form of a cabin. She frowned.

"I know we haven't yet talked about that…" he began, hesitantly.

Annie flipped off the cycle's light. Rupert immediately stepped beside her, and with her superior vision she could see him turn his head towards her, his question unspoken but obvious.

"Cabin empty?"

He followed her gaze. "Supposed to be." But through a window on the near side, the flickering light of a candle told him that this was, clearly, no longer the case.

* * *

Oz pulled back the collapsible gate that separated the freight elevator from his loft, and waited for Faith to step through before he followed, walking past her to toss his van keys on the counter in his small kitchenette. The Slayer took in the large open space.

"Nice digs," she offered.

"Functional," he replied. "Space for Dingo practice, not many neighbors to bother."

She had stepped over to the corner where the amps and drum kit were set up. "That's your band?"

Oz nodded. "Thirsty?" he asked, pulling a bottle of water from his fridge.

Faith shook her head. "Not really. Hungry though… slaying does that."

"Leftover Chinese if you want some," he replied, leaving the door ajar for her at her nod. He pulled his cell phone from a pocket. "Gotta check in."

The dark-haired girl felt a little trepidation, but said nothing. As he walked from the kitchenette, she leaned into the refrigerator, drinking in the cold for a moment before starting to peek into the white cartons within.

"Hey, Wes," Oz spoke into the phone, flicking on the light in the bathroom. "Slayer number one in hand. Heard from Ripper?"

Faith found some sesame chicken and began looking for a fork among the drawers.

"Nah, I'm staying in 'til morning. But I have more bad news." He stepped back out into the loft, phone cradled at his ear, hands prying open a first aid kit. "No, not now. Just get out word to meet at the R & W in the morning, say nine-ish."

The Slayer frowned as she swallowed a bite, watching him.

"Okay, see you then," he said, and hung up.

"That the Watcher? Wesley?"

Oz nodded, re-pocketing the phone. He sat on the couch, rolling up a pant leg to expose several ugly gashes. Faith had forgotten about them, but he hadn't uttered a single complaint.

She wandered closer as he began applying disinfectant, kit on the coffee table before the couch. "Those are nice ones."

"Par for the course," Oz offered the faintest of grins, "right?"

Her silence was an acknowledgement. She took a breath. "Has — Wesley — heard anything about my friend?"

"Nothing yet."

"Look," Faith said, putting down the carton on the coffee table, "I appreciate the rescue and all, but I still have to find Annie." She stepped around the couch and headed back for the elevator, but Oz stood and followed, catching her arm.

"Faith, come on," he soothed, "I'm sure she's okay. She's a Slayer."

She looked at him, eyes a little haunted. "So am I, but you weren't too happy about me facing that thing back there."

Oz gestured to the loft's windows. "It's getting light out. That means she's safe for now. We'll find her in the morning. Rip may have her by now anyway."

She wasn't comforted by that thought. "I'm just…"

"Worried, I get it," he let her go, and leaned back against the couch. "But also exhausted."

"Long couple of days," she answered, eyes lowered.

"So rest up," he leaned down to catch her gaze. "_I_ need to, for one."

Faith gave him a brief nod, then stepped back to reach for the carton again.

Oz moved across the apartment and flicked on a lamp in the far corner by a neatly made bed. "You can sleep here. Sheets are actually clean."

"The couch is fine. I've had worse, trust me."

He offered a crooked smile. "Not worse than _my_ couch, trust _me_."

She swallowed another forkful. "So who was that? I mean, it was a werewolf, right? I had thought it was you."

He came closer once more and sat on the couch again, facing her, taking a long moment before answering. "That was Veruca."

The Slayer kept her voice neutral as she walked back to the kitchenette. "Old friend?"

"Old girlfriend. From a long time ago."

Faith swallowed the last bite of chicken and dumped the carton in the trash. "Don't wolves mate for life?"

He looked at her ruefully. "Yeah, I'm hoping she doesn't hold me to that."

Inexplicably, Faith found herself hoping the same thing.

* * *

Leaving the bike on its kick-stand, Annie and Ripper moved closer to the cabin, the Slayer making no noise and the ex-Watcher very little as they inched through the grass and remaining trees. They saw no movement outside the structure as they approached, and the back door to the left rear was closed. There was a slight breeze rustling the leaves, but Annie's preternatural hearing could discern low voices coming from within the building.

The two split, one to either side of the lone window on the cabin's rear, each one's back pressed to the plank wall. They locked eyes, and Annie wordlessly indicated she would look first, Ripper nodding his assent. She took a breath, then a quick glance.

The interior was awash with the amber light of candles, placed at various points around the visible main room in addition to the one on the windowsill in front of her. The cabin's furniture had all been pushed aside, a couch leaned vertically up against one wall, and five figures knelt in the vacated space. They were vampires, already in game face. One knelt in front, shirtless, his torso covered in crudely rendered symbols Annie couldn't identify. The four behind him were spread out in a line. All were chanting, and they all faced the same direction, to the left from her vantage, towards a pentagram drawn in red on the floor, more lit candles placed at the five points of the star. The symbol was painted before an unlit fireplace.

Annie could see three doors within, in addition to the one coming out the back on Ripper's side of the window. Two were to her right, both ajar; one leading to a bathroom, the other to a bedroom. The third was straight across and closed, presumably out the front of the cabin.

She drew back and nodded to Ripper, who leaned in for his own assessment. He frowned. "That better not be oil-based paint!" he whispered harshly.

Annie smiled despite herself. Ducking down, she passed beneath the window and around to his other side. "What are they doing?"

"Looks like a summoning."

"Probably not conjuring up Santa Claus."

He turned back to her from the window, his lips curved into a smile. "I imagine not."

"I'd like to take two angles if you're up to it," she said, voice low. "But this door," she gestured to the one on the cabin's rear, "would come out in front of them."

Ripper leaned down, face inches from hers. "There's a window into the bedroom we might use. Though it's probably too small for me to maneuver without making noise."

Annie grinned wryly. "Look at you, trying to get me back in your bedroom already."

His eyes twinkled. "I rather enjoyed the first time."

She turned her head, feigning a look for trouble, rather than let her flushed cheeks reveal her agreement. "You armed?"

He slipped around her and over to the door, her eyes following him. His fingers worked a plank by the doorframe, and it popped open silently. From behind, he withdrew a sword and twirled it comfortably. "Always."

Without responding, the Slayer slid along the cabin wall silently, ducking under the window and heading for the corner. Ripper followed.

At the side of the cabin, Annie paused by the bedroom window and peeked within. The door to the main room was closed just enough that she couldn't see the vampires — and they wouldn't be able to see her. Pressing her fingers to the middle of the horizontally split frame, she pushed gently upwards, and the window rose in response. "You don't lock your windows?"

Ripper rolled his eyes. "Bears usually just use the front door."

When the window was open far enough, Annie vaulted up and through without a sound. Slayers would make excellent burglars, the ex-Watcher thought.

Annie's face reappeared at the opening. "Is this bed goose-down?"

He sighed. "How long should I wait to come in?"

"Count of thirty."

"One… two… three…" he acknowledged, setting the pace with her, "and starting now." With a nod, she vanished into the room again.

Ripper ducked to pass beneath the bathroom window, then paused at the corner. He glanced around it, and discovered another obstacle: a sixth vampire was posted outside the front door, where it faced a clearing and the path down towards the main road. He knelt quickly to paw the ground, and located a palm-sized rock. Still out of sight of the front, he took two steps back and tossed the stone over the cabin's roof to the other side. Already at ten in his count, he sprinted around the corner just as the rock bounced into the brush beyond the cabin, grabbing the vampire's attention. The creature had its back turned as Ripper came up behind and took off its head in one stroke.

On thirty he went through the door just as Annie barreled out of the bedroom. Three quick steps and she turned a foot and her body sideways, sliding to a stop, stake out, behind one of the four vampires in the rear line, the second from left. It exploded into dust. She shifted her weight to her back foot and donkey-kicked the third in the side of its head, then the leg lashed forward again to kick the furthest left. Both went flying.

Number three tumbled across four and both ended in a heap just as Ripper reached them. He lashed down with the sword and the creature on top disappeared, but the one beneath grabbed for his leg and Ripper dodged backwards. It flipped to its feet to face him.

Annie went for the kill with the last of the rear vamps, but it scrambled away and under the coffee table which, like the rest of the room's furniture, had been shoved to the walls. As Annie stepped in again, the vamp flipped the table's surface in front of itself like a shield, and holding the legs in its hands, knocked her backwards.

The shirtless creature in front hadn't moved, and the candles were glowing brighter. Ripper wondered what lovely beast would await them in the pentagram if they didn't hurry.

The ex-Watcher swung the sword in a quick arc, but his vampire pulled back easily. Annie glanced over her shoulder at him, then back at her own.

The vampire with the table shoved it outwards again, and the Slayer kicked right at the table's center, knocking the beast back once more. It ducked behind the edge of the couch that had been leaned up against the wall, legs facing outwards.

"Careful," Ripper called to her. "That table was a gift."

Annie glared at him. "Yeah, I'll be sure to protect the furniture as I fight for my life."

He swung the blade again. "No need to be snippy."

The vampire behind the couch stuck his head out. "What a poof," he snickered.

Annie reached for the table and yanked it backwards. The vampire came with it and she ducked out of the way. The table slammed into the back of the undead facing Ripper, knocking him forward right onto the ex-Watcher's blade. The table fell to the floor, and Annie grabbed the vampire by its shirt. She spun him around, lifting by the garment, and slammed it back first against one of the exposed legs of the couch. Dust went flying.

"There's a poof for you, jackass," she said, eyes narrowed.

The last of the rear vampires was eye to eye with Ripper, and swung an arm out, knocking him away. It then pulled the sword from its gut with a growl and lunged after him.

Ripper brought up a leg and planted it in the bloody wound. The vampire snarled in pain and recoiled. The ex-Watcher followed and snapped the creature's head to the side with a right hook, then backwards with a left jab. He pressed in, launching a series of punches, well-timed to keep it off balance. Annie took a moment to appreciate his fighting form before the shirtless vampire rose to its feet and turned towards her. She could see a swirl of light forming behind it.

The vampire was muscular, dark-haired with a light beard. It didn't wait for Annie to close on him; with a foot it shoved the coffee table her other vamp had dropped forward, banging into Annie's shin. She stumbled backwards, and before she could catch herself, the creature crossed the space between them and slammed her over-balanced body to the floor hard. Straddling her, the vamp bent at the waist and unleashed a quick round of lefts and rights that had struggling to cover up.

Ripper wanted to help, but his own opponent had caught a second wind and was driving him backwards with wild swings of the sword. He glanced over his shoulder as he retreated, and as a thought hit him, he began backing towards the open bedroom door. He feinted in and out of the sword's reach, alternately drawing the vampire's ire and frustration. The ex-Watcher kept one hand behind him, and when his fingers brushed the open doorframe he stepped forwards and spit directly between the angry yellow eyes.

As the creature growled and came at him, enraged, Ripper slipped straight back through the doorway. The vampire swung wildly once more, lunging at the same time. The blade slammed into the wooden frame and stuck fast. Ripper grabbed his arm and yanked him into the room, then grabbed the sword grip and pulled it around and out of the wood, spinning into the room with it just as the vampire stopped his forward momentum and turned about. The blade's swing took his head neatly off shoulders on its way around.

Back in the main room, Annie guarded her face with her forearms as the muscular vampire struck at her repeatedly. The space inside the pentagram was very bright, and Annie thought she could see a large form solidifying within it.

This sure was a fun town. She wished she could rewind time, have kept Faith from opening that rail car door. Have figured some other way to relieve her dark angel's boredom, preferably one that involved snuggling and languorous kisses and not getting smacked about the head and neck by the undead and having big bads pop into the room out of swirly bright nowheres.

Alas.

Instead, Annie reached down, grabbed the back of the vampire's calves, lifted her feet, and with a pull slid herself through his legs and behind him. He instinctively grabbed after her, and Annie snagged his wrists and pulled. He somersaulted over and landed on his back. She flipped to her feet, then reached over and grabbed the coffee table by the leg. Before the vampire could sit up, Annie yanked over the table and put one leg on his chest, then pivoted away from him and sat on the tabletop heavily. She blew out a breath as the creature exploded to dust beneath her.

She had time for three seconds of rest before a sallow-colored, man-shaped demon with blood red eyes and loose, sagging skin formed whole inside the pentagram. It wore a long, flowing garment. Foam dripped from its mouth, and it looked about with great irritation. Sighing, Annie climbed to her feet and strode forward quickly, then slammed a fist directly into the creature's nose.

"Ow!" it yelled, bringing a hand up to cradle the injured feature. "What'd ya do that for?"

Ripper stumbled back into the room, sword at the ready. At the sight of the demon, he pulled up.

"Clem?"

Annie watched as the demon turned towards the ex-Watcher, and its irritation evaporated into a surprised grin.

Ripper cocked his head. "I thought you were heading to Cleveland?"

"Hey, hi Rupert," he answered. Then his face crumpled, and he tilted back his head. "Oh, _man!_ I'm back in Sunnydale? My car's in Omaha!"

Annie's jaw dropped. "You know him?" she asked the Englishman.

He stepped closer. "Well yes, Clem and I are old friends." He looked to the demon, gesturing at his foaming mouth. "You're dripping, old friend."

Clem frowned, then held up the toothbrush in his hand. "Can I spit?"

"Bathroom," Ripper answered, hiking a thumb over his shoulder. Clem nodded and headed that way. Annie realized its garment was, in fact, a bathrobe.

She hung her head. "This just gets weirder and weirder."

Ripper shrugged at her. He turned towards the bathroom and the sound of gargling. "What are you doing in Omaha?"

"Sightseeing," the demon answered when he had finished rinsing. "Well, not sightseeing in Omaha," he corrected, returning to the main room, and wiping his mouth on a towel slung over his shoulders. "I'm doing kind of a 'Hellmouth 2 Hellmouth 2K' tour, little bit at a time."

Ripper sighed. "Sounds lovely."

The Slayer gave him a dubious look. "Been doing that in the other direction. It ain't that great."

Clem frowned at her. "Girlfriend, you need to stop and smell the moonflowers."

The ex-Watcher grinned. "So what's in Omaha, then?"

"I'm staying with my sister," the demon answered. "Not that that's too pleasant, but she's family. She's married to a chaos demon." He leaned in to Annie. "They're not very attractive, all slime and antlers."

"And you _are_?" she returned.

Clem pulled back, offended. "Hey!" He indicated his face. "I like to think I have character."

Annie rolled her eyes, but couldn't help smiling.

"You do, my friend," Ripper soothed, "you do indeed." He looked about the room, hands on his hips.

The demon followed his gaze. "So, uhm, looks like you've been redecorating, Rupe."

"Not intentionally," he answered, moving to start resetting the furniture.

Annie moved to help. "Vampire party, whole big thing."

"Huh. Always the swinging time in Sunnydale." Clem watched Annie sling the couch to its feet with ease. "Hey, are you the Slayer?"

"In the flesh."

Ripper looked to them. "Oh, I'm sorry, my manners have escaped me, what with all the violence. Clem, this is Annie Summers, the Vampire Slayer. Annie, this is Clem."

The demon held out a paw with at friendly grin. Annie took it reluctantly. "Sorry," she said, "I've never been formally introduced to a demon before. Usually their death precedes the greetings."

"Glad to be your first exception." He leaned over to slide the coffee table back in front of the couch. "So, vamps shacking up in your love n— er, your cabin, Rupert?"

"Yes," the man replied, reddening slightly, "my fault for not coming out here more often."

Annie nodded her head at the pentagram. "We thought they were planning to conjure some big bad."

Ripper frowned. "Why were they summoning _you_?"

The demon looked aghast. "What, is this pick on Clem night?"

"Sorry. Just… bad things coming up here. You haven't heard anything, have you?"

"Giles, I've been in Omaha. What would I hear about Sunnydale?"

Ripper nodded. "Right."

Clem shrugged. "Well, unless Toronto means something to you."

"Uh, a city in Canada?" Annie offered, eyebrows raised.

"That may not have been it. Eldor's cousin – that's my sister's husband—"

"Antler boy," the Slayer nodded.

"Yeah," Clem duplicated the nod. "He's Italian, and he's got a pretty thick accent."

"I thought he was a demon?"

Clem looked at her. "So am I, but I was raised in California, so I speak English. Eldor's cousin is visiting from Palermo. Demon, raised in Italy, speaks chaos demon and Italian, with a smattering of English." He puzzled. "And garnok demon, for some reason."

"Clem…" Ripper prompted.

"Oh, yeah. Anyway, Eldor's cousin kept talking all last week about Toronto for some reason. But I don't think they have any close relatives in the Great White North. Does that mean anything to you?"

The Watcher thought. "Could he have been saying _tramonto_?"

The demon put one index finger on his nose and pointed the other at Ripper. "That's it!"

At Annie's raised eyebrows he responded. "It means nightfall."

She raised her hands. "Which means…?"

"I have no idea."

She smiled. "What, you're not going to run off and consult books or anything?"

He returned the smile. "In the morning."

Clem held up his toothbrush. "It _is_ morning."

"After we get some rest," Ripper amended.

"So is that bed goose-down?" Annie raised an eyebrow.

The demon coughed discreetly, and the eyes returned to him. "Uhm, not that I wouldn't want to stick around and have a bagel with you two after your, uhm, 'resting up', but if there's another apocalypse coming to Sunnydale, I'd just as soon be on my way."

The ex-Watcher sighed. "If only we all had the luxury."

* * *

Spike started awake as the crashing of mausoleum door shook the granite and marble high above. It took him a moment to orient himself in the unfamiliar surroundings.

He lay in an uncomfortable bed in a room barely brighter than pitch. There were the mingled smells of stale air, old books, and sex. It was the latter that brought the memories home.

"Ver— er, Drusilla?" he called out tentatively when his searching hand found only empty sheets beside him.

His feet touched the cold stone floor and he strained his preternatural vision to find the burned out stub of candle on the table nearby. Match in his fingers, its relit glow was just touching the bed-chamber walls when the door swung open and the familiar form with jarringly different but equally familiar eyes stalked in, her body naked as his own.

"Horrible people want to ruin our party!" she pouted. "Mean Wolf-boy and pretty dark girl, bright as the sun."

"Gonna catch your death, goin' out like that," he gestured to her lack of attire.

She wrapped her arms around herself. "Had a nice fur on, so soft and cuddly, daddy!" Then she frowned again, holding up one hand, crimson tipping the fingers. "But blood tastes all wrong in this body!"

Spike closed the distance between them and put an arm around her waist, pulling their bodies tight against one another. "Daddy can keep you warm too, love." He turned his head and licked her fingers, one by one. "And there's always someone wants to ruin the fun, ducks. But I won't let them."

Her smile became as pure Drusilla as her eyes. "Silly daddy, _I_ won't let them. The lights are falling, Spike, and all around us the beasties are coming home to roost. I have them calling."

"Gonna have to be a little more specific, pet."

As an answer, the bifurcated girl raised her small hand to the shelf over the table nearby, and ran her fingers over the leather spines of a row of dusty books there. She walked two up one and tilted the book out from the others. Spike reached over and drew out the volume, stepping away from Dru and opening the book on the table. He flipped through the pages.

"Never much for the book learning, Dru. Lest it was poetry."

She pulled the book to herself, then lifted it in her hands, pages still open. Her eyes closed, she let her head drift back and side to side, as if listening to some unheard music. The hair on Spike's arms stood up, an energy seeming to filter into the room. Drusilla lifted the book up level with her face, and at some invisible cue, her eyes opened, her head snapped forward and she blew across the pages. They ruffled violently and lifted, then fell back in place to a new spot in the book. She presented the volume back to Spike.

He turned it back to face himself, then scanned the words. His eyes widened, and he looked back up. "How did you find this?"

Her lips twitched to a crooked smile. "Talked to the demon himself," she glanced up and behind her, twiddling her fingers in the air, "on the other side. Said I could come back if I helped him open the gate."

The vampire puzzled. "You mean the Hellmouth?"

"No, love," she replied. Picking up the candle, she crooked a finger at him and turned away. Stepping through the door once more, Dru led him into the hall beyond. Passing the ornate bronze ladder that led up to the mausoleum, she moved to a door he'd overlooked before in the darkness and the haste of lust. It was heavily carved with wards and runes Spike couldn't identify. The girl before him touched several symbols in a seemingly random pattern, and the door slid aside.

"I meant the gate," Versilla finished.

Immediately, the light of the candle seemed to magnify. Straight ahead of them, but some distance off, a hundred or more yellow stars danced in a line in perfect time with the small flame. But more interesting still was the flickering column of light in the middle of the line, illuminating a dais at its base. The girl stepped aside, and Spike moved into the room past her, at once drawn and repulsed by the play of light and shadow.

He walked slowly across the chamber, noticing only distantly how thick the air felt, how unnaturally cold it was, how the oddly shimmering lights revealed horrible figures seemingly embedded in the walls all around. Spike had eyes only for the dancing sparkles themselves.

He reached the dais itself, and stood at its edge, transfixed. He lifted one hand into the column, almost expecting to grasp a flicker in his fist. He barely started when Veruca's hands slid over the hard muscles of his back and gripped his arms, the candle now placed on the floor.

"It's beautiful, Peaches," Spike said.

She ran her lips and tongue up his spine. "Almost as lovely as you, daddy."

He closed his eyes at her touch, drawing his hand back and laying his fingers over hers on his shoulder. "How soon do we open it?" he asked. "How soon do I get you back for real?"

She spun him around to face her, eyes seductive and smile wet. "Soon," she whispered. She shoved him backwards, and with his heels at the raised edge, he tripped to his backside on the stone dais. She climbed astride him. "Almost soon enough."

The last thing Spike saw before he only felt, head arched back as she rode him in the shadows and light, was a ghostly image in the great curve of mirrors, of Drusilla and Veruca both, eyes glazed in rapture. And behind them, something very big, and very dark.

-


	14. Gathering

After a short discussion, Ripper ushered Clem out the cabin door with the motorcycle keys in his hand, spare jeans, flannel shirt, and hooded jacket in place of the bathrobe, and orders to send Oz or Xander their way in a few hours. Annie had suggested a freight train as his ultimate transportation back to Omaha, but the demon insisted on at least the dignity of a Greyhound, claiming that no one ever really looked at their fellow passengers on a bus anyway. The Englishman had loaned him the money for a ticket, and wished him safe passage.

"I'll try to get the deathtrap to the bus station in one piece," Clem ribbed him gently about Ripper's preferred mode of travel. "You do the same here, okay Rupe?"

"That's always the goal, old friend," the ex-Watcher replied, and shut the door behind him.

He turned to the empty room, and leaned his back against the door. He sighed, then turned his head at a rustling in the bedroom. Ripper cleared his throat, pushing off and starting for the sofa. "I'll just take—"

He turned his head as she appeared in the doorway, legs bare beneath a lengthy nightshirt. "None of this 'I'll take the couch' crap, okay?" she interrupted him. "We're both tired and it's a big bed, so just come on."

Rupert didn't move, simply stared at the writing on her garment. "Where did you find that?" he said in a voice that startled him with its evenness.

Annie jerked a thumb over her shoulder. "Same cabinet you found those clothes for, uh, Mr. Pink Skin." She looked down at her front, and read the phrase 'Chicks Dig Unix'. "It's okay, right? Normally I sleep au naturel, but I did actually want to _sleep_, so I figured…"

"Yes," he said, swallowing before he answered. "It's fine."

She heard it then, in his voice. Looking up, she could see his distant look, and she realized her mistake. The Slayer stepped forward, reaching out and taking his hand. "Come on, before you fall over."

His eyes met hers blankly, but he let her draw him into the bedroom, and close the door behind them. Annie let him go, then drew the heavy curtains against the brightening morning, before climbing into the bed and drawing the covers up between him and the reminder of his past.

"So how did you meet Clem?" she asked, and with a hand turned down the covers on the other side of the bed.

Ripper blinked and looked at her once more, then smiled gratefully and moved to the bed. He sat and began to remove his boots.

"I met him while investigating Sunnydale's demon underground."

"Just for fun, or what?" Annie crooked an eyebrow.

He chuckled. "No. Despite your image of Watchers, not all our information comes from books. It helps to actually speak with demons, occasionally."

She watched him slip off his socks, then stand to remove his trousers. "How can you trust what they tell you? They're demons. What if this Clem guy has been setting you up just to knife you in the back someday?"

"Well," he said thoughtfully, sitting on the bed in his boxers (a detail which Annie realized she'd been too occupied to remember from the last time he was this unclothed), "there is a spectrum of good and evil in the various demon races, just as there is in humans. Most demon races tend towards the 'evil' end, just as — so I would like to believe — most humans tend towards the 'good' end. But individuals can always be exceptions."

"And Clem's one of the good guys?"

He slid his legs under the covers, and settled back against his pillow. "He's been a good friend."

Annie slipped down to her back, careful to keep the covers over the nightshirt, and looked back up at him. "So he gave you the skinny — pardon the pun — on the bad stuff going down."

"Uhm, well, he was a source. But not a very good one," Ripper turned sheepish. "He's too nice; none of the really bad demons would talk to him. But there are plenty of channels for information here, most willing to part with—" he grinned, "—the skinny, for some financial reward."

Annie turned on her side and propped up on her elbow, head in her hand. "That's what you were doing last night. You were asking around with your demon sources after Faith and me."

"You've managed to slip under the radar so far."

She shrugged, grinning. "We've only been here a day and a half. Give it time."

He raised an eyebrow. "Will you?"

Her smile faded somewhat, and she turned to her back once more. "Are there really that many demons in this little town?"

"There are twelve cemeteries in this 'little town', and fifty-seven churches. What do _you_ think?"

When she didn't respond, Ripper slipped down to his back as well. He looked at the ceiling. "You know, as something of an expert on the subject, I'd say you're quite good."

She quirked an eyebrow. "An expert? We're talking about what, exactly?"

He heaved a sigh. "Slaying."

"Oh, right," she grinned.

"Yes, well, you _are_ good. Unconventional, but good."

"Surprised?"

"No," he shrugged. "Merrick was a good teacher."

Again she fell silent. It was his turn to face her, scrunching the pillow beneath his head with a hand.

"I knew Kendra for a year," he said softly, "and her technique was impeccable, but almost entirely by the book. She'd learned her Calling from the time she was a young girl — as you were to have. But being away, with no one to help, that's schooled you also."

"I have to think on my feet."

He fell silent himself, taking in her profile.

"What?" she finally asked, turning her head.

"I'm wondering what you'd be like if we'd known you'd survived. If you'd been my Slayer from then."

"You _had_ a Slayer."

"Actually, I didn't. She was more properly Mr. Zabuto's. But he sent her to Sunnydale when the Council couldn't find Greta Braiden's replacement."

Annie took in the soft lines around his eyes. "So… technically, _I'm_ your Slayer."

He smiled. "Meant for each other, we two."

She blinked, and he blushed. "Not an unappealing prospect," Annie said.

"I didn't mean—"

"I know what you meant," she smiled. "But not what _they_ intended, I'm sure."

"No," Ripper shook his head. "We broke quite a few rules in the Council's eyes, to be certain. Very basic ones, in fact."

"Good thing you're an _ex_-Watcher," she replied, placing a palm on his T-shirt clad chest idly.

He covered her hand with one of his own. "I'm fairly certain that when it comes to interacting with the Slayer, the Council doesn't recognize my retirement."

"Well they have to recognize mine."

"Annie—" he began, but she cut him off.

"Look," her eyes avoided him, "I don't want to talk about Watchers or Slayers right now, okay?"

Ripper was quiet for just a moment. Then he lifted her hand, still beneath his on his chest, and lightly kissed her palm. "All right," his voice was gentle. "No Watchers," he kissed the tips of her fingers, "no Slayers," and then the back of her hand.

"Just us," she finished, meeting his green eyes.

"Just us," he echoed.

Their gaze locked, the air still, breath held… and then Annie yawned.

They both laughed. Ripper gently tugged her arm, and she moved the few inches between them as he slipped his arm around her. She nestled her cheek on his chest, and he kissed her forehead softly.

"This bed is really soft," Annie murmured.

"The finest goose-down a librarian's money can buy," he whispered in return, and could feel her smile without looking.

In moments, they were both asleep.

* * *

Oz watched the demon drive away on the motorcycle, then looked up at the window of his loft, half-expecting to see Faith watching. From his position on the couch, he'd seen her stir when Clem had rung the buzzer, but she had, at the very least, _played_ sleep when he had taken the elevator down to the street. Though he'd have rather offered his old friend more hospitality, Oz knew bringing a demon into the loft with an antsy Slayer would have simply been asking for trouble. As it is, he was wondering just how good a view she'd have as Clem drove away.

Ripper had the other Slayer. Faith would — he hoped — breathe easier at that news. Certainly if they were to elicit her help, it was essential.

But that was the rational side of him talking. He'd gotten very used to listening to that voice in the last couple of years. Strategy, organization, planning for the latest apocalypse…

That was not the side that had been talking to him last night, as he lay on the lumpy couch and drifted in and out of sleep, eyes watching the young woman in his bed. Instead he'd heard something he hadn't in a while.

Never once since he'd met Ripper and the others, learned what they did, night after night, had he considered leaving Sunnydale. He could have, after he'd learned enough about what he was, how to control his lycanthropy. Hell, he could have once he knew to chain himself up three nights a month.

Yet that had never been more than a passing thought for him. Cordelia had once referred to what they did as 'saving the day, one night at a time'. And it was a worthy cause. But the real reason had been far simpler, far less altruistic.

His reason had been Veruca.

Ripper had met her at an underground club he used for information. She was a singer in a band he'd heard there, and her control and 'beyond her years' maturity spoke of darker secrets, something Ripper knew instinctively. When Drusilla had kidnapped Cordelia, she'd leant a hand to locate them. Oz, not yet a werewolf, had seen the distinctly out of place girl in the halls of Sunnydale High, and she'd made an impression.

Veruca was wild, and made no attempt to hide that fact. He knew, from later half-spoken thoughts and sidelong glances that when Jenny Calendar had died, and Ripper made a lifestyle of the underground scene, that the werewolf had indulged in her own version of helping him recuperate. Oz didn't know — or want to know – the details, but he couldn't help but notice Willow's continual discomfort around the she-wolf.

It was shortly thereafter that Oz had contracted his own condition. Ripper had introduced them, and it didn't take long for Veruca's fire to completely seduce him.

Ripper, Ethan, and Angel taught him discipline. Veruca taught him indulgence. Control yourself, but feed the animal. It, and she, were almost impossible to resist.

He couldn't count, or forget, the nights of furious lovemaking after the heady danger of fighting vampires or demons.

Veruca's way, though, led to both passion _and_ anger. When a hunter had come to town seeking werewolf pelts, it affected her badly. She had no problem being the good guy when it meant freeing her predator within. But being the hunted, not the hunter, feeling the fear burn through the controlled rage, was the beginning of her end.

Eventually she'd left them, and him. After accidentally killing Sunnydale's Deputy Mayor, she'd been offered a position by the man himself. He'd seen how tenuous her belief in good over evil, versus power over weakness, was, and exploited it. She'd been both on Drusilla's side, and against it, as it served the Mayor's purpose.

When Drusilla had snapped Jenny Calendar's neck for attempting to cast on old gypsy curse to restore her soul, Rupert Giles had abandoned the last of his British decorum and attempted to kill her, practically with his bare hands. Spike had borne the brunt of his assault, however.

After Veruca switched sides, she'd helped Dru capture Ripper and Angel, and use their respective long-ago lovers to restore Spike's health.

But when Dru had tried to end the world using Acathla, the wolf girl had instead helped prevent it, seen to it that Angel sent the maniac vampire to Hell.

Through it all, and right to the moment he and Veruca had fought their final battle, Oz had remained ambivalent about her, about himself. In those last moments, the night before the Mayor had attempted his Ascension, Oz had at last come to terms with who he was at heart, where his loyalties were, without question. He was done. He was over her. She was dead to him.

But then, she wasn't dead. She lay in a coma, unliving, but undying. And he was denied real closure. Oz was on hold.

So while everyone around him (bar Ripper) did their Hellmouth duty but lived their lives, enjoyed love, Oz steeped himself in the work, the sacrifice. He still played in the Dingoes, but even that wasn't offered its due; he'd shared too much of the music with Veruca to embrace it anymore.

He strategized, organized, planned for the next apocalypse.

Now, with Drusilla trying to return, and then, last night, seeing Veruca — even seeing her at her worst — it made him question what he was doing with his life, or what should be his life.

Oz was twenty years old, and tired of being on hold.

He'd lain on his couch, and watched a pretty girl asleep in his bed, and felt his soul stir for the first time in far too long.

Time to get moving.

Oz opened his phone to dial Xander, let him know to pick Ripper and Annie up, and instead found himself staring at an incoming text message. A reply to one he'd sent in the depths of night, in a moment of uneasy wakefulness.

The words he read would have been a source of mild trepidation, even in the best of times.

"Understood.

Be seeing you.

–E."

* * *

Willow looked through the front window of the cabin as Xander waited at the door, knuckles red from knocking.

"Let's just use your key, hon," the soldier said.

"Hang on… I don't want to catch him in the middle of anything," she replied, head bobbing this way and that, hand above her eyes to shadow the glare as she strained to see inside.

"If he was in the middle of 'anything', he'd have heard me knocking. What do you see?"

She squinted. "The bedroom door is closed."

"Then he's probably sleeping." He looked at his watch. "Oz said nine-ish, and we're already running behind."

Willow stepped back to the door. She took out her keys, and kissed her fiancé quickly. "You military types so need to be punctual." She unlocked the door and opened it tentatively. "Rupert?" she called quietly.

Xander stepped in after her, his eyes immediately taking in the residual disarray of the cabin's interior, the recently burned candles, and especially the large painted pentagram. "Will?" he called, and she turned her head. "What do you make of this?"

The redhead followed his gaze and moved closer to the fireplace. "Someone was doing a summoning."

"I smell vamp dust. I'm thinking when Oz said 'pick Rip and the other Slayer up at the cabin' he was leaving out a few details."

"Apparently. I hope he's okay," she said, brow furrowed. She moved to the bedroom door and knocked timidly. "Rupert?"

At the lack of response, she turned the knob and opened the door first a crack, then enough to stick her head in. "Rupert?" she whispered loudly.

She saw a form stir in the bed, and heard a soft moan of protest. The witch pulled her head back out of the door's opening. "Rupert?" she called again softly.

"Willow?" came Ripper's hoarse response.

She stuck her head back into the room, but averted her eyes. "Good morning!" she said, unable to keep the cheeriness out of her quiet voice. "Oz called a meeting… Xan and I are here to pick you up." She retreated once more.

"Why are you hiding?" his voice was puzzled.

"Why are you talking?" came another sleepy voice.

"No reason!" Willow practically squeaked. "See you in a minute!" She pulled back and closed the door.

* * *

Still nestled within his arms, Annie raised her hand to cover Ripper's mouth as he tried to reply. "No more talking."

He gently lifted her hand. "We have to get up, love."

She didn't move her head from his chest. "I mean it, no talking. I'll take measures."

He drew in a breath to respond, and Annie slid up his body and planted her lips over his. Startled at first, Ripper soon melted into the kiss. Just as his body started to respond, she pulled back.

"Measures, I said," and she flopped back atop him, eyes closed, cheek to his chest.

"If you think that will dissuade me, it's the wrong tactic entirely."

Annie sighed. "God, you Brits, so many words! Couldn't you just say, 'kiss me again'?"

"Kiss me again," he replied.

She turned once more, planting her hands on either side of him, and raised to look at his face in the dimness. "I thought we had to get up?"

"I knew it wouldn't be that easy," he rolled his eyes.

She kissed him, this time swinging a leg to his other side and lowering her hips to his. His body reacted instantly, and his hands latched to her sides to pull her tighter against him. Exerting her Slayer strength just slightly, she drew out of his grasp and rolled out of the bed. "I distinctly heard you say it was time to rise and shine."

His voice was a growl. "Believe me, the rising part is done."

She glanced at the confirming evidence of the tented blankets. "Naughty Watcher," she purred.

"Bloody tease," he replied.

She smiled wickedly. "Always." With a fluid motion Annie drew the nightshirt up and off, leaving herself naked. Then she turned away and bent to scoop her clothes from the floor and started donning them.

Ripper threw off the covers and sat up, turning his back on her. Looking about, he spied Clem's abandoned bathrobe on a chair. He stood and grabbed in, giving it a quick sniff before pulling it on and stalking to the bedroom door and out.

Annie grinned to herself as she heard the bathroom door slam and water faucet turn on. She drew her leather pants on and sat on the side of the bed.

Her smile faded as she picked up her shirt. She wrung it in her hands nervously. _God Annie_, she thought, _be careful. This would be so easy._ 'Easy', in her life, had never translated to 'good'.

The door opened again and Ripper came back in, his T-shirt flecked with wet spots from an apparent quick splash of his face. He removed the robe and tossed it back on the chair, then reached for his pants.

Behind him, Annie slid shut the drawer where she'd returned the carefully folded nightshirt. "So," she breached the silence, "time to meet your friends?"

He took a deep breath. "Good as any."

"Is there a brush or something in here I can use?" she gestured around the room without looking at him. "Maybe a rubberband?"

The ex-Watcher stepped around the bed and to her. He rested a hand on her shoulder, and at last she lifted her eyes to his, surprised to find no admonishment there. "You look pleasantly disheveled."

Annie raised her hands to her hair. "Great for a first impression, huh? I have bed head."

"You nervous?" he arched an eyebrow. "What will it matter if this is your only time meeting them? Or have you changed your mind about staying?"

"I haven't _made up _my mind about _anything_," she replied, turning a mock scathing look on him. "Even whether I like you."

He sat on the bed beside her. "You're not sure how well you play with others."

She smoothed the leather of her pants, just to give her hands something to do. "Except for Faith, I haven't had many others to play with."

"I suspect that's by choice."

"You suspect right."

"Well," he said, "if you'll give them a chance, they're good people." When she turned almost-hopeful eyes on him, he added, "And I say that as someone you've just met, and who has a profession you trust not one bit, so I'm sure you'll believe me right off."

She smiled gently, "I trust you as much as the next magic shop proprietor."

"Hmm," he pondered, "I'm not sure Bob down at 'Charms R Us' is quite as trustworthy as I am."

Annie laughed.

"Ready?" Ripper asked.

She nodded in return. As he stood from the bed, she added, under her breath, "As I'll never be."

* * *

Ripper looked to be in a much better mood coming out of the bedroom the second time, Willow thought. But then he spotted her standing by the pentagram, and even across the room his eyes immediately went to the bruise on her jaw. It took him three long strides to reach her.

"What happened?" he said, fingers on her chin, turning her head gently. "Are you all right?"

"Slayer encounter," Xander answered from the couch.

"It wasn't like that," Willow answered quickly, her eyes darting momentarily to Annie, who was hanging back in the open doorway of the bedroom, a frown on her face. "She thought I was maybe a bad guy. She was very sweet after that."

"She left you tied to a chair," Xander answered.

Despite herself, Annie smiled. Maybe her continual words of caution _had_ sunk in.

"But I'm fine." Willow looked up into Ripper's concerned eyes. "Really."

"You better be," he smiled at her. The ex-Watcher cocked his head. "So why were you hiding? Earlier, when you were waking us up?"

"I didn't want to interrupt anything." She lowered her voice conspiratorially, forgetting that the Slayer could easily hear her anyway. "Especially smoochies. You deserve more smoochies."

Ripper placed an arm about her shoulders and drew her close, kissing her temple. "You always look out for me."

Xander stood from the couch, and the Englishman gestured Annie closer. She stepped forward with obvious reluctance.

"Come on," Ripper said. "You didn't have this much trouble meeting Clem, and he's a demon."

The witch's eyes went wide. "She met Clem?"

"Last night."

"Clem was here last night? Awww! I can't believe I missed him."

"Wait," Xander frowned. "Clem was _here_ here?" He gestured at the pentagram. "_That's_ who was summoned?"

"Long story," Ripper answered. "We'll discuss it with the others." He turned again to the Slayer. "First, I'd like you two to meet Annie Summers, the Vampire Slayer."

The soldier stepped forward, "Hi, I'm Xander, Xander Harris." He started to hold out his hand, then paused. "You don't greet people with violence too, do you?"

Annie smiled shyly, and shook her head. "Not typically." She furrowed her brow. "Although I did punch out Clem when he appeared." Off their looks she added, "He was a demon materializing in a pentagram. I jumped to conclusions."

Xander shrugged, and took her hand. "Perfectly understandable Slayer reaction."

Ripper spoke up again, "And this is Willow."

"Of 'Rupert and Willow' fame," Annie said, and turned her tentative smile to the young woman.

Willow returned the expression. "The very same."

The Slayer looked back to the ex-Watcher and broached the question she'd wondered before. "Your daughter?"

He smiled broadly. "No," he looked down at the Wicca's face, "just my eternal joy." He kissed her forehead, and she slipped her arms around his waist, holding tight, eyes closed.

Annie felt a powerful, unexpected surge of jealousy. It must have been visible on her face, for she saw Xander look at her sidelong, then step towards the other couple. "Okay, okay, break it up." He wagged a finger at the ex-Watcher. "No macking on my fiancée. Suave, good looking British guys…" he grumbled with a false frown.

Willow swatted at him playfully and he ducked aside. She held out her hand for Annie, who took it. "It's very nice to meet you."

Annie merely smiled, still tentative. She cringed inwardly. _Get it together, Annie. Where's the girl who rode into town on her iron horse? _she thought. Which brought another question. "So you've met Faith?"

Willow's eyes went wide. "Oh yes, after a minor misunderstanding," she replied, fingers unconsciously lifting to her jaw. "She told me some about you two," the witch said, "and don't worry, she's with Oz, so she's safe. I know she was worried about finding you last night."

"Who's Oz?"

Ripper leaned closer. "Werewolf."

"Good to know."

"Okay, people," Xander clapped his hands, "running late, time to go."

Willow rolled her eyes. "Military."

Annie smiled. But when she turned to share it with Ripper, her heart froze for just a minute. As he watched the other two, she saw an almost desperate look of affection in his eyes. Then he met her own and his smile brightened considerably, but she knew it was just for her benefit.

Annie knew that look. She'd seen it on Merrick. She'd worn it herself. Annie knew from desperate. And her urge to bolt came back forcefully.

Truthfully, she didn't know what she felt. But as she hid her own emotions from her face and followed the others out of the cabin and into the morning, in her mind's eye she saw the ragged jaws of Fate closing, trapping her inside.

* * *

The "Closed for Inventory" sign was already in the _R & W's_ front window when Xander's Jeep pulled past the shop and around to the alley behind. The Slayer chuckled.

"What?" Ripper crooked an eyebrow at her.

"I wonder whether the population of your Sunnydale here drops significantly when that sign goes up," Annie answered.

The ex-Watcher returned the grin. "And how many legitimate store inventories have frightened the skittish into impromptu vacations."

Xander pulled to a stop behind Oz's van. "I think most of Sunnydale is eternally clueless to the real darkness."

"I like to think of them as 'still innocent'," Willow offered.

"That's why I love you," Xander said, reaching over and caressing her hand.

Annie wasn't sure why, but watching the small gesture, and the exchange of soft smiles that followed, melted her.

The doors of the van opened as the four of them climbed out of the Jeep. Annie saw the small man she'd seen with Ripper at the Bronze get out of the driver's seat.

"That's Oz," Xander offered to her questioning gaze. He noticed the figure coming around the front of the van. "Which would make that—"

"Faith!" Annie exclaimed, and surprised herself by practically bolting to the younger Slayer. As she approached, Annie saw a hesitance in the dark-haired girl, and slowed. Then she caught her eyes.

There was so much there. Pain. Fear. Profound sadness. Over what? Their fight? Or something deeper? She knew this girl so well… her body, her mind. Her heart. Faith blinked, and Annie saw the tears hang in her eyes, unspilled but threatening. And for the moment, none of their differences mattered. Annie stepped to Faith and enfolded her in her arms.

"B, I'm so—" Faith began.

"Shhh," Annie soothed, rubbing Faith's back, tilting her mouth to the younger girl's ear. "It's okay."

"We have a lot to talk about."

"I know," Annie said. "But I think we get to listen first."

Faith pulled back, surprise and hope in her face. "You mean it?"

"No promises," Annie smirked at her.

The brunette embraced her again. "I love you so much," she whispered.

"I love you too, baby," Annie returned. "No matter what."

She felt Faith sigh very slightly in resignation, imperceptible but for her Slayer senses and intimate knowledge of the other girl. Outsiders sometimes thought they read one another's minds. It didn't matter at the moment. Annie pulled back just slightly, and kissed Faith in reassurance. They shared a small smile, and turned back to the others, ready to face the world.

* * *

Willow glanced at the faces of the men around her, then quickly retrieved her shop keys and moved to unlock the back door. She smacked Xander on her way by.

"Oz, have you heard from the others?" the witch asked.

The werewolf blinked, then looked to her. "Wesley and Anya were picking up Cordy."

"Yeah," she responded, "I don't think we'll see Queen Cordy in the sewers until that fungus demon incident becomes a more distant memory."

"And Mr. Broody Pants must be inside already if the sign is out," Xander added.

Ripper moved to the Slayers. "That would be Angel he's referring to," he leaned down to tell Annie.

"I'm catching on," the Slayer smiled back. She nudged Faith. "By the way, if there is any staying happening, that's gonna give me the wiggins, having a vampire around with 'don't kill' tattooed on him."

"I hear you," Faith replied.

As the others moved into the shop, Oz giving them a lingering glance before entering, Ripper paused with the Slayers. "So you must be Faith."

"Faith the Vampire Slayer, at your service," the younger girl offered the slightest of curtseys. Annie elbowed her.

The ex-Watcher smiled. "Glad to have you join us, even if only temporarily."

"Looking forward to lending a hand or two," she answered, then glanced at Annie. "Or four."

The other Slayer started towards the door. "Shall we get the lowdown on your apocalypse?"

Ripper smiled, following her. "Then maybe do some research."

Annie glanced back, eyebrow raised. "Knew there was a Watcher in there somewhere."

Faith hesitated as they headed in, and the Englishman slowed. "I just wanted to say, uhm… I'm sorry about Kendra."

He stopped dead. Ahead Annie slowed. "That's… that's very kind of you," he responded at length. "Thank you, Faith."

She offered a sad smile. "Well…" she said and, nodding, started forward again, and he fell in beside her. "So why do they call you Ripper?"

He paused to let her enter the store first. "You'll find out the when fun starts."

* * *

Angel was standing in the darkest corner of the room as the two Slayers entered and, on unspoken instinct, split to tactically advantageous positions on different sides of the room, Faith by the research table, fingers running unconsciously along the back of a wooden chair, and Annie just an arm's length from a Goran sacrificial spear. The ex-Watcher could barely hide a delighted smile, fond as he was of the souled vampire. Of all their motley crew, he knew that would be the toughest sell. And it wouldn't get easier when they learned of his association with Drusilla. That had been easy for none of them, he thought grimly. Yet even he himself, with all that the insane vampire had done to him personally, had never made that final step, that conclusion that they'd be better off, that the Hellmouth would be better defended without Angel around.

Of course, after Dru had been sent to Hell, it had hardly seemed to matter. Now… well, no time to think on that now. There was a crisis at hand.

To which end the bell on the shop's front door rang as the group's stragglers entered. "I'm just saying," he could hear Anya's voice, "any sudden movements and I'm back out the door."

The look on Wesley's face was one of accommodation mingled with carefully hidden exasperation. "Well, if you have to make a break for it, we'll rendezvous back at the apartment in two hours," he whispered rather audibly.

"Good idea," Anya replied, clearly not getting the joke.

Cordy shook her head as she pushed past them, eyes rolling, and approached the table and its perimeter of chairs, where Willow, Xander, and Oz had already taken seats. She immediately approached the new dark-haired stranger. "Faith, right? I'm Cordelia, and welcome to our nightmare."

Faith took her proffered hand firmly. "Nice to formally meet you, Cordelia. Funky little town you have here."

"Oh, you've noticed?" she replied with a sympathetic raise of her sculpted eyebrows. "That you're still here is... well, I was gonna say a good sign, but that's probably not true." She pulled out a chair and sat, then turned her eyes on Ripper. "Is there such a thing as voluntary insanity?"

The ex-Watcher smiled. "Not that I've heard of." He waited as Wesley sat in one of the overstuffed chairs by one of the room's many bookshelves. He could see the younger man's eyes upon Faith, who had pulled out a chair and perched on the edge, unconsciously ready for any action. Ripper grinned when Anya plopped unceremoniously into Wes's lap, to the Watcher's surprise.

Ripper moved forward towards the table. "I suppose that introductions _are_ in order. Our guests have met me — informally, as it were — but for the record, my name is Rupert Giles. I am the proprietor of this shop, the _Runes & Wicca_, along with Willow Rosenberg," he nodded at the henna-haired witch, who was seated next to Faith.

Willow smiled brightly. "I've kind of met both of you too," she said, glancing between them, "but, you know, these are better circumstances and stuff."

Ripper heard Annie mutter "Really?" under her breath.

The younger Slayer had reached over to cover Willow's hand with her own. "I'm sorry about last night, I really am."

"It's okay, really," Willow replied. The fingers of her uncovered hand touched her jaw. "Not even sore anymore."

"Beside her is Xander Harris, Willow's fiancé and a Corporal stationed here at the local military outpost."

Xander sat up straighter. "The guys in my local outfit are aware and experienced with Sunnydale's unique form of enemy threat. As long as they don't draw attention of the higher ups back in Washington, they can help us when we need it. Comes in handy."

"When they don't get in the way," Wesley added quietly. At Xander's offended scowl he said, "I'm sorry, but demons are the Slayer's business." At which point Anya elbowed him painfully. After taking a moment to recover, he addressed Faith and Annie directly. "Wesley Wyndham-Pryce, junior member of the Council of Watchers. And this," he indicated the girl on his lap, "is Anya Emerson."

"Hi, perfectly normal, run-of-the-mill girl here, not harmful or threatening in any way," Anya chimed in.

Annie looked at her straight-faced. "So you were the vengeance demon then."

Wesley had to clamp his hands around Anya's waist to keep her from bolting immediately. "Reformed," he said.

"Right," Annie replied.

Ripper cleared his throat. "Indeed. Well," he gestured across from Faith at the table, "this is Daniel Osborne, or Oz."

"Werewolf, not reformed," Oz said.

Faith shifted in her seat. "Yeah, I'm sorry about hitting you at that cemetery, too."

"You're doing a good job of beating up me and mine," he answered. "As long as we direct that towards the bad guys, we're good."

Faith smiled. "Roger."

"So, then this is Cordelia Chase, whom you've met," Ripper continued. Cordelia offered a nod to both guests. "And that just leaves Angel."

"Him, we got," Annie said, and Faith's lips twitched in a smile.

"I think you'll find that, for amateurs," Ripper ignored her, "we do pretty well at demon hunting."

Faith raised an eyebrow. "If that means we're the professionals, do you Watcher guys pay us?"

Wesley looked appalled, and Ripper coughed to hide a laugh. Annie sported a grin of her own. "Don't say it," she held up a hand in Wesley's direction. "Sacred duty, blah blah blah. I've tried to tell her."

The Watcher raised an eyebrow in curiosity, wondering how this other girl was connected. He didn't remember anything about a Watcher this young being sent to locate the lost Slayer.

Ripper turned now to the newcomers. "This is Faith Lehane," he eyed the younger Slayer for confirmation, and she nodded. "She was Called when— after Kendra. Which makes her the active Slayer."

The dark-haired beauty gave a general wave to the room, then turned to Wesley. "Making you, I understand, my active Watcher. For what it's worth."

Ripper saw Annie's face cloud, and continued on in haste. "And this is Buffy Anne Summers. She was the Slayer Called after Greta Braiden, and she goes by Annie."

The blonde spared him a tiny grin, and he felt a bit of relief. And then delight as he saw Wesley's jaw practically fall off his head.

Anya beat younger Brit to the response. "Wait, they're _both_ Slayers? How is that—"

"CPR," Willow jumped in. "Nothing to do with zombies."

"This is extraordinary," Wesley said. He looked at Ripper. "Unprecedented."

"As far as I know," the ex-Watcher replied.

"I have to—" Wesley began.

"—consult your books?" Annie finished for him, and the room laughed. "He's a Watcher all right."

Wesley sighed, and Anya patted his hand in comfort.

As the laughter quieted, Ripper called their attention again, and turned to Oz. "That done, I should ask why you called this meeting."

The werewolf met Ripper's eyes steadily. "Veruca's awake."

His soft voice might have been thunder, and the eerie silence that followed rolled over the room, as it often does before a summer rain.


End file.
